Taking a lexical approach to teaching: principles and
problems1
Nigel Harwood
After
briefly reviewing some of the reasons why the traditional grammar/vocabulary
distinction is no longer adequate, this article describes two key principles
which are claimed to be at the core of teaching according to a lexical
approach. There are, however, a number of major difficulties which necessarily
co-occur alongside any attempted classroom implementation. Having discussed how
these difficulties may be overcome, the article closes by conceding that there
is still much work to be done before the approach can hope to become more fully
integrated into the mainstream ELT coursebook.
Introduction
‘Lexical approach’ is a term bandied about by many, but, I
suspect, understood by few. What does taking a lexical approach to language
teaching mean? What are the principles and tenets behind a lexical approach?
What problems will teachers have to face if they wish to adopt a lexical
approach?
For the present
purposes, I will be using the term lexical
approach to mean that lexis plays
the dominant role in the ELT classroom, or at least a more dominant role than
it has traditionally, which has largely been one of subservience to ‘grammar’
(Sinclair & Renouf 1988). The approach stresses the necessity of using
corpora to inform pedagogical materials and the importance of regularly
recycling and reviewing the language taught. I should make clear from the start
that my understanding of the term lexical
approach is not necessarily the same as Michael Lewis’ (e.g. 1996, 1997,
2000), although I imagine that my take on the principles and problems inherent
in implementing a lexical approach probably have a considerable amount in common
with Lewis’ own views.
The article begins
with a brief outline of what I mean by the term lexis, before briefly outlining two of the tenets which in my view
constitute a lexical approach. The same tenets are then problematized at
greater length. Finally, while it is argued that there is still much to be done
before a lexical approach is accepted by a majority of practitioners and
researchers and integrated into mainstream ELT, I close by claiming that the
approach can be seen as having many of the same concerns as state-of-the-art
applied linguistics.
The
concept of lexis
Language teaching has traditionally viewed grammar and
vocabulary as a divide, with the former category consisting of structures (the
present perfect, reported speech) and the latter usually consisting of single
words. The structures were accorded priority, vocabulary being seen as
secondary in importance, merely serving to illustrate the meaning and scope of
the grammar (Sinclair & Renouf 1988).
However, a number
of studies (e.g. Altenberg 1990; Erman & Warren 2000; Kjellmer 1987; Pawley
& Syder 1983) have shown that the Chomskyan notion of a native speaker’s
output consisting of an infinite number of “creative” utterances is at best a
half-truth: in fact prefabricated items form a significant part of a native
speaker’s spoken and written output. Only this can account for what Pawley
& Syder (1983: 193) call the puzzle of nativelike selection: a native
speaker’s utterances are both “grammatical” and “nativelike”, and while only a
“small proportion” of grammatically well-formed sentences are nativelike, that
is, “readily acceptable to native informants as ordinary, natural forms of
expression”, these are the sentences which native speakers produce. It would
seem, then, that speakers need both a prefabricated, automatized element to
draw on as well as a creative, generative one—both “idiom” and “open choice”
components (Sinclair 1991).
Once the
importance of prefabricated language is acknowledged, the traditional
grammar/vocabulary distinction becomes problematic: as the above studies show,
native speakers are prone to using much of the same language over and over
again rather than starting from scratch each time they speak/write. For the
purposes of this article, therefore, when I use the term lexis I have in mind strings
of words which go together (i.e. prefabs and collocations) as opposed to
the single words language teaching
traditionally called ‘vocabulary’: rather than consisting of a repository of
content words, lexis is not easily distinguishable from the concept
traditionally labelled as ‘grammar’ (e.g. Singleton 1997). This fuzziness
suggests that lexis is more powerful than was once thought, and hence deserves
a higher priority in syllabuses.
Principles
of taking a lexical approach
principle 1: teach real language, not ‘teflese’; use computer
corpora but be corpus-based, not corpus-bound
At the centre of a lexical approach is the insistence on
teaching ‘real’ English and a rejection of the ersatz language found in the average ELT coursebook; and indeed a
number of corpus-based studies (e.g. Holmes 1988; Hyland 1994; Mindt 1996;
Williams 1988) confirm that the language coursebooks teach is “not what people
really say” (Lewis 1997: 10), it is “TEFLese” (Willis 1990: vii). Hence it can
be argued that the only way to avoid distorting the language with this TEFLese
English is for the coursebook writer to access the authentic language via
corpora, as opposed to relying on their intuition. It is well documented that
intuition (even native-speaker intuition) often fails to accurately reflect
actual language in use (e.g. Biber, Conrad & Reppen 1994); in contrast,
corpora can instantly provide us with the relative frequencies, collocations,
and prevalent grammatical patterns of the lexis in question across a range of
genres. In addition, light is shed on lexical
variation (cf. Fernando 1996; Moon 1998). To illustrate the point, I draw
on data from an earlier study (Harwood 2000) comparing the language found in a
native-speaker corpus (the British National Corpus) with the language in a
selection of coursebooks. In Bell & Gower’s coursebook (1992: 150), for
instance, no variation of the phrase You
must be joking is included, giving the learner the impression the form is
frozen. However, the BNC includes the following variations:
I
says [sic] you’re joking You’re
flipping joking!
You
are joking me? You’re
joking
You
are joking, aren’t you? You’re
joking, aren’t you?
You
gotta be joking! You’re
joking, of course
You
have got to be joking You’re
not joking?
You
have got to be joking me You’ve
got to be fucking joking
You
have to be joking You’ve
got to be joking!
You
must be bloody joking! You’ve
gotta be joking mate
You
must be fucking joking! You’ve
gotta be joking!
You
must be joking You’ve
just got to be joking
and while it is relatively simple to use native-speaker
intuition to point to the fact that You
have got to be joking me, for instance, or I says [sic] you’re joking
are relatively untypical examples of variation on this phrase, and hence not
worth teaching (especially since, if the learner is familiar with more common
variations, they would understand and be able to respond to this variant in any
case); and while it is similarly straightforward to determine that variations
such as You’ve got to be fucking joking
cannot be included in international teaching materials because of their
potential to offend, we are nevertheless left with a number of typical,
‘polite’ variations which Bell & Gower’s material fails to cover—and which
corpus data has brought to the fore (Harwood 2000: 14-16). However, by
dismissing some of the variations as inappropriate and hence not being necessarily constrained by corpora, we
are being what Summers (1996: 262) calls “corpus-based but not corpus-bound”.
principle 2: recycle and revisit
Nation (1990: 44-45) concludes that coursebooks’ lack of
recycling “provide[s] considerable cause for alarm”, before claiming that lexis
should be recycled between 10 and 12 times for higher-level learners, and
warning that teaching vocabulary without incorporating the necessary recycling
is wasted effort. Similarly, Kojic-Sabo & Lightbown (1999) stress that an
EFL learner’s need for recycling/reviewing is perhaps more acute than a
non-native speaker who is surrounded by the L1 (i.e. an ESL learner): since EFL
learners are not continually surrounded by the target language they cannot be
said to benefit from any spontaneous reviewing which may result. Regardless of
the amount of ‘practice’ material which accompanies the initial presentation,
what is needed is repeated exposure over a given period, as opposed to exposing
the learner to the lexis once, ‘practising’ it, and never recycling it again
(Harwood 2000; Lewis 1997).
Problems
of taking a lexical approach
problem 1: corpora and teaching ‘real’ english
Real
English, corpora, and ‘learner overload’
The case of you must
be joking discussed previously illustrated that corpus data requires
adjustment before it can be allowed to serve pedagogical ends: for instance,
untypical or culturally inappropriate items will need to be removed from the
handout which is given to the learners. However, it is likely that further
adjustments will still be required, due to teachability and learnability
factors: that is, since anecdotal evidence (and common sense) suggests there is
a limit to the number of items learners can learn at any one time (i.e. in a
single lesson), including every lexical variant at every opportunity will
complicate the issue unnecessarily. Learners will be overwhelmed and will fail
to learn any—or at least learn fewer—lexical strings less well than if they had
been presented with a smaller, more manageable list in the first place. So
implementing a lexical approach requires a delicate balancing act: on the one
hand, the teacher will wish to consult the appropriate corpora to avoid the ersatz English of the textbooks which
reflects little of the language’s lexical variations and predominant patterns.
On the other hand, however, teachers will be anxious to ensure learners are not
“overloaded” with too much lexis which would result from exposing the class to
as many lexical strings as the corpus describes (cf. Cook 1998). We should be
aware of the dangers of teaching learners unusual or deviant variations when,
since we have neither the time (as teachers) or the space (as materials
writers) to include more than some
variations in our lessons or coursebooks, we should ensure these are the
variations which will be most useful
to the learners. Hence intuition regarding both linguistic and pedagogical
matters needs to be exercised: in addition to asking ourselves whether any of
the attested corpus examples are untypical in the skill/genre we are attempting
to teach (e.g. academic writing: the research paper), pedagogical judgements
such as the accessibility/difficulty/volume of material also require
reflection, since, while corpora can tell us much, pedagogical concerns such as
these are clearly not addressed by the data (Cook 1998).
Some
additional limitations of corpora
Although corpora are no pedagogical panacea (e.g. Cook 1998;
Widdowson 2000), I do not believe that corpora in themselves necessarily make
the implementation of a lexical approach problematic. The key issue is rather
how corpus data is selected and manipulated. To take one example of the
potential misuse of data, there is a popular but mistaken belief that the frequency with which lexis occurs in a
corpus will determine its priority in our syllabus. In fact, I would suggest
that the more advanced the learners’ level, the more apparent it becomes that
something more than frequency counts is required. Although much has been made
of Willis’ (1990) assertion that the most frequent 700 words of English
constitute 70% of text, the problem of what one should teach subsequently
remains. As Willis’ figures show, this is much less easily prescribable:
The 700 most frequent words cover 70%
of text, but coverage begins to drop rapidly thereafter. The next 800 words
cover a further 6% of text and the next 1000 words cover 4%…It is true that
general frequency is not the sole criterion [for identifying the appropriate
lexis for a syllabus]. (Willis 1990: 47)
Hence, while the frequency factor should not be ignored in
our attempts to mirror real English in the classroom, it is clear that frequency
should not be the only, or even the principal, factor in determining the lexis
to teach. Relevant also is work on text type (e.g. Biber et al. 1994) and genre
analysis (e.g. Bhatia 1993; Swales 1990), showing that a research article, for
instance, will feature different types of structures and phrases when compared
with a business letter; and that to a certain extent such features are
predictable. So we would do well to bear in mind learners’ wants and needs (cf.
Biber et al. 1994): it is evident that the materials designer will have to
consult very different corpora when designing materials for pre-sessional
postgraduate learners enrolled in English-medium universities who need to
develop their academic writing skills, for instance, compared to an intermediate-level
general English group who wish to explore some of the most common ways native
speakers open a conversation with their peers.
In summary,
corpora in no way constitute a pedagogical “quick fix”: while corpora should
undoubtedly stand at the centre of a lexical approach, the teacher and
materials designer will need to be aware of the many variables which will
influence corpus selection and data manipulation.
From
printout to handout
The materials designer needs to acknowledge that there is
likely to be a degree of learner (and teacher) resistance to corpus-based
materials if the data is handled insensitively, due to the fact such materials
are untraditional and also because, more generally, some perceive computers
(and therefore computer-based learning) negatively. Such resistance will, of
course, only increase should an impenetrable amount of corpus data be simply
reproduced straight onto the textbook page (Cook 1998; Leech 1998; Widdowson
2000).
Hence the
requirement for the designer and/or teacher to “do” something with the data.
One example of what should be done, if communicative language teaching is to be
believed, is to ensure the learner feels involved, investing something of
themselves in the material (e.g. cf. Allwright 1981; Coady 1997; Sökmen 1997).
The materials designer will need to present the (potentially impersonal) corpus
printouts in such a way as to stimulate the learners’ personal involvement (cf.
Aston 1995); and while various researchers have been developing Johns’ (1991) practical
ideas for exploiting corpus printouts in the classroom for some time (e.g. Fox
1998; Lewis 1997; Milton 1998; Thurston & Candlin 1998; Willis 1998) the
same ideas are crucially lacking in published commercial materials (Harwood
2000; Moon 1997). Although this may have been more excusable in the past, when
corpus-based descriptions were harder to come by, these days designers’
over-dependence on introspection and intuition is less and less justifiable
(Harwood 2000).
Existing
published materials are not corpus-based
Since there is evidence that designers are failing to
exploit corpus data to shape coursebooks’ lexical syllabuses, the teacher who
wishes to push lexis up the agenda on their course is obliged to produce their
own corpus-based materials. This constitutes a serious difficulty for the
spread of a lexical approach: however willing the individual teacher may be to
teach lexically, their institution may well prevent them from doing so (Baigent
1999). In addition, of course, time restraints and an excessive workload result
in many teachers introducing only a minimum of their own material onto a
course. All of this suggests that the influence of a lexical approach will be
negligible while there continues to be a dearth of available published material
which abides by its tenets.2
Corpus
access
I close this section on corpora and a lexical approach by
supposing that, in spite of the difficulties described above, a teacher wishes
to consult the appropriate corpora to design lexically based materials.
Assuming the teacher has access to the necessary computing technology (a
considerable assumption—most teachers around the world do not have such
access), they will still be faced with the fact that ELT publishers refuse to
grant them access to consult many corpora. Other corpora, such as the British
National Corpus, require access fees that the teachers’ institutions may be
less than willing to provide. And while it is true that there are now cheap
corpora available such as the BNC Sampler, teachers of EAP who require soft and
hard science sub-corpora to help students write across the disciplinary
spectrum will continue to be denied access because of publishers’ commercial
interests.
problem 2: teaching and learning real english
Whatever the problems involved in accessing the appropriate
corpus data, a more fundamental concern is whether it is desirable to even
choose to teach “real” (i.e. nativelike) English. The question is obviously
enormously complex, and I limit myself to sketching out four related issues.
Respecting
learners’ wishes
There is evidence to suggest that many learners have no wish to learn real lexis and sound like an
L1 (e.g. Anglo-American) user: despite the fact that many teachers (consciously
or unconsciously) hold the nativelike model up as the “ideal”, the learners’
non-native variety can constitute a separate cultural identity, marking the L2
speaker out from the native community (cf. Beneke 1981; Carter 1998; Dellar
2000; Hinnenkamp 1980; Kasper & Blum-Kulka 1993; Littlewood 1983; Prodromou
1996; Wray 1999). Meanwhile the Anglocentric coursebook continues to
predominate, which presumes a degree of integrative motivation on the part of
the learner and implicitly denies or devalues local Englishes (Beneke 1981;
Prodromou 1988). (Such problems, of course, necessarily involve questioning the
“global” strategy of the major ELT publishers: if local varieties of English,
which differ considerably, are to be the target, then perhaps publishers should
be more concerned with marketing local, rather than international, “one product
fits all” coursebooks. This is discussed further below.)
In sum, however
“real” the lexis is, teachers cannot assume that learners will be prepared to
learn lexis simply because “native speakers say it” or “it’s in the
coursebook”.
Perceptions
of ‘real lexis’
Perhaps some of the objections to teaching real language
arise from our perceptions of what exactly real lexis is: I suspect that to
many teachers it consists of what Leech (1998) tactfully calls the “less admirable
features” of language, which we may not wish our learners to reproduce.3
Alternatively, other teachers may bring to mind the various idioms and
idiomatic phrases course and resource books periodically dig up which could be
described as parochial and of limited relevance to the class: Hobson’s choice; to send someone to Coventry
(Harwood 2000). Yet I would claim that such language, however “real” it may
be, is not the kind of lexis which a teacher would be contemplating teaching by
following a lexical approach: if learners’ needs remain to the fore, real lexis
does not have to be impolite, irrelevant or outlandish. As we saw above when
discussing corpus data, to identify a piece of lexis as authentic is not
sufficient justification for including it in the syllabus: what is essential,
then, is to prioritize (real) lexis according to need.
Non-native
teachers
One of the objections to emphasizing real lexis is due to
the fact that the majority of English teachers worldwide are non-natives. How
well-equipped are non-natives to teach “real” current British slang? In any
case, prioritizing this kind of language would reinforce the alleged supremacy
of the native speaker teacher as “expert” (Prodromou 1996). However, take what
is perhaps a more common example: the non-native speaker teaching an EAP class.
In this case, the real lexis in question should present little problem for the
non-native teacher who is well-versed in the conventions of academia and is
therefore no less expert than a native speaker.
Varieties
of real English
Another key question is what we mean by real English and
real lexis: do we mean American, Australian, British,
problem 3: recycling in practice
Coursebooks
fail to recycle lexis systematically
A recent study of 12 upper intermediate and advanced
coursebooks found that none of the
prefabricated language or metadiscourse examined was systematically recycled
(Harwood 2000). As Littlejohn (1992) claims, ELT materials are failing to keep
pace with applied linguistics research, which in this case would suggest that
recycling should be a standard feature of the coursebook. And while it should
be conceded that recent studies of lexis (e.g. Sanaoui 1995) have emphasized
the importance of the learners managing their own vocabulary learning by means
of skills the teacher has helped them develop, I do not believe this exonerates
materials (or those who design them) from responsibility for recycling. Rather,
I would contend that many teachers in fact underestimate the part recycling
plays in language learning, and that the coursebook should engage in recycling
to underline its benefits to learners but also to remind teachers to
incorporate recycling into their lessons regularly.5
Coursebooks
have a role to play in encouraging teachers to recycle
However highly teachers rate the importance of recycling, in
many classrooms they have little power to ensure it features regularly. Since
many institutions worldwide oblige their teachers to follow the coursebook
slavishly (cf. Baigent 1999; Dubin & Olshtain 1986), how can the teacher be
expected to recycle if recycling activities are left to their whim and are not
included in the material?
Recycling
needs to consist of more than “doing the same thing twice”
A possible explanation for the apparent reluctance of
materials designers (and teachers?) to recycle sufficiently can be found in
Lewis’ (1997: 51) assertion that “ “Doing the same thing twice” is still widely
considered time-wasting and potentially boring”. As Lewis implies, while a recycling/revisiting
strategy should be at the heart of a lexical approach, it is also vital that teachers
and material writers ensure recycling is done in an interesting and refreshing
way, so that the learners’ interest is still engaged. Variety and novelty,
rather than rote learning and staid predictability, should be the cornerstones
of the recycling component in a coursebook.
problem 4: face validity for teachers and learners
Learners’
and teachers’ perceptions
I wish to reiterate that it is essential that a lexical
approach is implemented with sensitivity by the teacher: it is not a case of
throwing out all established pedagogy. With this in mind, I now turn to the
question of face validity. Although
the term is normally associated with the field of language testing, where it is
used to examine how acceptable and credible a test is to users (e.g. Alderson,
Clapham & Wall 1995), for this article I take it to mean what learners and teachers expect to devote
time to in the language classroom. I will now attempt to illustrate the
importance that face validity has when utilizing a lexical approach, and
potential difficulties which may arise which can be traced to worries about
face validity.
While material
which takes a lexical approach can be built around many ‘conventional’ design
principles which feature in more traditional ‘grammar-based’ exercises, where
there is material which is not
conventional, not the stuff of the
standard ELT coursebook, the question of face validity is likely to arise,
since teachers and learners will not be used to the materials and may well
therefore question their validity. Because all materials feature a “hidden
agenda” (Nunan 1989), with what the writer sees as being the essential things
to be learned coming to the fore, by its very prominence, lexis is implicitly
ascribed an unprecedented degree of importance. But will the class accept this?
Might they not demand ‘grammar’ in the sense in which it is normally presented?
While we have seen that the Chomskyan generative paradigm cannot be claimed to
describe language adequately and that the realms of grammar and lexis are
neither readily definable nor even necessarily discrete (and hence in teaching
lexis one can simultaneously be teaching grammar), this is not to say that
many, or even the majority, of teachers and learners would accept this and be
prepared to attach a higher priority to the acquisition of lexis. The prudent
course of action, then, is not to abandon grammar teaching in the traditional
sense, but to ensure that syllabuses and materials include both lexis and grammar (cf. Wray 2000). We should
remember that there is a type of ELT which predominates in many parts of the
world which is radically different in its underlying assumptions (i.e. it
values traditional grammar instruction more highly) when compared with the
state-of-the-art Anglo-American type (cf. Anderson forthcoming).6
Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of these more traditional approaches, and
however sound the case for a more lexically-oriented approach to teaching may
appear, we must proceed carefully if those teachers and learners who see structural
grammar teaching as key are to be at all persuaded of the merits of a lexical
approach. Cook’s (1998: 60) insistence that a preoccupation with lexis will
“inevitably” lead to “a bewildering refusal to teach grammar” on the part of
the teacher must be proved mistaken if face validity is to be maintained.
Perhaps one of the reasons the COBUILD
course was not particularly successful was that teachers and learners had never
seen anything like it before, and face validity became an issue. In contrast,
the most recent coursebook associated with the lexical approach (Dellar &
Hocking 2000) contains a traditional “grammar” component and does not appear
unduly different to the standard coursebook. In sum, then, the way to assuage
teachers’ and learners’ fears of a lexical approach is to avoid an iconoclastic
call to abandon all grammar activities. We should instead simply call for the
teaching of lexis to come higher up the agenda.
Implementation
Some of the difficulties I have raised concerning the
practical implementation of a lexical approach can be connected to face
validity. As Thornbury (1998) has pointed out, teachers are unlikely to be
interested in a set of pedagogical principles per se: it is only when the same principles can be applied to
classroom situations that their worth is evident. Given the lack of guidance
available in the literature at present as to how a lexical approach should be
implemented, then, the approach is unlikely to be adopted until it is seen by
teachers as operationalizable. So although Lewis (1993) gives us an insight
into the kind of syllabuses he does not
favour and a range of classroom activities which bring lexis to the fore (Lewis
1997), we are never presented with a comprehensive syllabus based around a
lexical approach that Lewis does
approve of (Thornbury 1998). Difficulties such as these which hinder the
implementation of a lexical approach necessarily involve face validity: it may
seem that either (i) the lack of available commercial materials means the
approach is misguided, and that lexis is not so important after all; or (ii)
that however legitimate teachers and learners believe the approach might be,
the lack of materials makes implementation impossible.
The lack of
lexically based materials is now discussed further.
problem 5: the world of elt publishing
The lack of available pedagogical material claiming to take
a lexical approach can be used to critique the ELT publishing world. The
conservatism of the industry is well documented: ELT publishers fail to respond
to findings in applied linguistics research quickly, and indeed often never
apply these findings (Littlejohn 1992; Thornbury 1998). In order to maximize
profits, materials are developed for the global market, despite the fact that
the many varieties of international English being spoken suggests that products
should cater for individual local markets instead (Prodromou 1988). All of this
helps to explain why at the time of writing, with the exception of Dellar &
Hocking (2000), Powell (1996), and the COBUILD
series, coursebooks purportedly built around any sort of lexical approach are
conspicuous by their absence.
Conclusion:
a lexical approach and the state of the art
While I have tried to outline what I see as a number of
difficulties regarding the implementation of a lexical approach in this
article, I wish to emphasize that I am in no way inimical to the approach per se. Hence I close by pointing out
that in many ways a lexical approach shares the concerns of the most current research
in a number of areas of applied linguistics.
Take, for
instance, a lexical approach’s insistence on abandoning the misleading
grammar/vocabulary dichotomy which has continued to inform ELT materials. The
fuzziness of the grammar/lexis distinction is also currently being underlined
by studies in phraseology (e.g. Altenberg 1998; Gläser 1998; Howarth 1996);
while the emphasis on the importance of prefabs in a lexical approach is
confirmed by work on formulaic language (e.g. Aijmer 1996; DeCock 1996, 1998;
DeCock et al. 1998; Granger 1998; House 1996; Moon 1997, 1998; Wray 1999, 2000;
Wray & Perkins 2000) and metadiscourse (e.g. Crismore, Markkanen &
Steffensen 1993; Hyland 1998a,b, 1999; Intaraprawat & Steffensen 1995;
Mauranen 1993a,b). If a lexical approach is implemented appropriately, learners
will acquire lexis suitable for their
needs, a priority which accords with the recognition of the importance of
genre analysis (e.g. Bhatia 1993; Swales 1990), in that research in this area
shows clearly that the lexis which is suitable for EAP groups, say, may not be
so suitable for conversation classes. Hence a lexical approach recognizes that,
in order to design material for an EAP class, it is necessary to consult an
academic, rather than a general English, corpus.
As it stands at
present, the concept of taking a lexical approach to teaching is work in
progress (Thornbury 1998), since there are two main areas connected with the
approach which are in need of clarification: while some researchers (e.g. Cook
1998; Thornbury 1998) have critiqued the approach’s purported lack of principled foundation, there is also
concern about the practicalities of the approach’s implementation (e.g. Baigent 1999; Lewis 1997; Thornbury 1998). It
is hoped that this article has made a contribution to the discussions on both
these issues.
Notes
1. This
article is a version of a talk given at the 35th IATEFL conference.
I am grateful to Ron Carter,
2. Apart
from the COBUILD course, a recent exception is Dellar & Hocking (2000).
3. Leech
(1998: xix-xx) has various ‘vagueness tags’ in mind here: and things, and stuff like that, or something, which are, as he
says, “less admirable” inasmuch as such language tends to be stigmatized, since
it is seen as devoid of “real meaning” (see Schourup 1985). However, such
formulaic chunks do serve a number of
functions: for instance, since they are automatized, they afford the speaker
additional processing time (e.g. Dechert 1984; Pawley & Syder 1983; Weinert
1995; Wray 2000; Wray & Perkins 2000). In addition, they serve to manage
discourse (Aijmer 1996; Edmondson & House 1981; Keller 1979; Wray &
Perkins 2000) and maintain social harmony (Aijmer 1996; Coulmas 1979; Cowie
1994; Moon 1992; Nattinger & DeCarrico 1992; Wildner-Bassett 1984; Yorio
1980). Hence the issue of whether we should teach stigmatized language to
learners when it may be useful to them in a number of ways is a sensitive one
which I obviously cannot do justice to here. Nevertheless, I suggest it is less
straightforward than Leech seems to be implying.
4. Focusing
on learners’ wants and needs rather than all-round (nativelike) proficiency has
the added advantage of ensuring that much time is not wasted in attempting to instil proficiency in, say, colloquial spoken British English when
the learner does not wish it. Hence Rampton’s (1990) preferred term of expert, rather than native speaker, which more accurately reflects the fact that a
learner may be proficient (‘expert’) in their chosen field, rather than being
obliged to be proficient in all
fields (‘native’).
5. I
am well aware there is much ‘behind’ the material which the designer intends teachers
to exploit (cf. Cunningsworth 1995; Cunningsworth & Kusel 1991; Littlejohn
& Windeatt 1989). So if a recycling activity has not been included in the students’ edition of the material, this
is not to say that the designer did not envisage the need for it. Indeed,
perhaps notes on a recycling stage are included in the teachers’ edition. There therefore remains at least the possibility
that we are being too precipitous in our condemnation if we have not consulted
teachers’ books. The argument could, of course, be taken even further: there is
much behind the material which designers
do not even include in teachers’ editions, whereby designers rely on
teachers’ experience and intuition to tailor the activity to suit the group’s
individual needs and tastes. However, if this reasoning is followed to its
logical conclusion, we would never
condemn material as being inadequate: we might decide, for instance, that the
designer was perfectly aware of the need for the teacher to expand on/extend
the activities in the students’ edition, but chose not to record this in the
teachers’ notes, as they believed teachers would rapidly identify the need for
further consolidation without requiring explicit instructions to this effect in
the teachers’ notes. My feeling is that a line must be drawn somewhere: the
fact, for example, that none of the
data barring a single self-access exercise in the material surveyed in my
previous study (Harwood 2000) is recycled as a matter of course elsewhere
surely deserves comment and (qualified) condemnation.
6. One
of the reviewers also pointed out that there are classrooms which have become
so ‘communicative’ that any grammar teaching at all has become taboo. In any
case, the message for coursebook writers remains the same: proceed cautiously
so as to prevent alienating teachers and learners who favour a more structuralist,
or a more ‘communicative’ pedagogy.
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[Received 10/10/02; revised
21/2/02]
Nigel Harwood
Department of Language Studies
Canterbury Christ Church University College
North Holmes Road
Canterbury
Kent CT1 1QU
UK
e-mail nh19@cant.ac.uk