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by Nihal Cooray Director, General National Authority on Teacher Education

This article attempts to present a picture of what currently exists in the name of English Language Teaching (ELT), the objectives of which range broadly between Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Teaching of English for No Obvious Reason (TENOR) and then to explore the significance of such rigid objective-specific ELT programmes for both language teaching and the training of language teachers. All these have serious implications for some influential factors in the promotion of English education in the country today.

These factors could be enumerated as follows:

* Information Technology sector which is being planned and designed to afford opportunities for all age ranges as a nationwide educational venture for both professional and personal development which culminate in overall national social economic development,

* Formulation of the National Labour Policy by the Ministry of Employment and Labour,

* The introduction of English medium on optional basis to post primary grades in schools,

* Rapid growth and expansion of private sector establishments of international stature where a very high degree of competence in English use is vigorously pursued.

* Yawning gap in quality of secondary level pupil achievement levels in English between poor and privileged schools whether they are national or provincial schools.

All these factors would direct us to decide what forms of direct action we should use to improve teaching and learning English at all levels. There is one critical element which cuts across all segments of English education. That is the kind of instruction which goes on all over in the guise of language teaching. This happens in all categories of schools despite numerous teaching approaches tested and recommended to suit particular learning objectives. The utilitarian functions of passive understanding of language forms have taken precedence over the understanding of the very essence of that language - the educative value of English.

Specific purposes

The analysis of grammatical elements in language structures which held sway for well over two decades played a similar role by dissecting the language system using mechanical language instruction. The value content of the language was simply downgraded.

The Teaching of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) does just that ESP is used to refer to the teaching of English for a clearly utilitarian purpose. This purpose is usually defined with reference to some occupational requirement. Here the language learners require English as a means of furthering their specialist education or as a means of performing a social or working role, that is, a working role as a waiter, technician, air-hostess etc efficiently. In ESP courses the skill priorities should be partly based on an assessment of the circumstances under which teacher intervention in the learning process is essential, where it is useful and where it is of marginal advantage.

This content-free language teaching approach sounds reasonable to the extent that it caters to a limited target group using a well chosen slice of the language. Strangely what we see today is that this concept is being filtered through to communicative language teaching. The instructor would teach students how to direct a tourist to the nearest post office, how to attend to telephone calls, fill in forms and application forms and write short letters of excuse and acknowledgement, memos etc. disregarding what students want to use English for. ESP implies a special aim.

The aim may determine the precise area of language required, skills needed and the range of functions to which language is to be put. It certainly does not imply a special langauge. Therefore no elements of ESP or any other teaching approach should get enmeshed with communicative activities in a school English teaching programme.

This is because in a school system English is generally taught with a general educational aim in mind - that is, it is regarded as a 'good thing' for them to learn a foreign language as a part of a broad education. It is not their concern to acquire a communicative knowledge of English language use. They would in the alternative like to know how syntactic and lexical rules of English operate. They would like to learn how some English forms are expressed in particular settings in their experiences of everyday life.

If ESP is essentially unrelated to Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), what then is CLT? CLT emerged from a number of disparate sources. During the 1970s and 1980s applied linguists and language educators began to reassess pedagogical practices in the light of changed views on the nature of language and learning, and the role of teachers and learners in the light of these changing views. The contrast between the term 'traditionalism', and CLT are contrasted in the following diagram in relation to a number of key variables within the curriculum. This diagram presents contrasts in relation to theories of language and learning, and in relation to objectives, syllabus, classroom activities and the roles of learners, teachers and materials.

Traditionalism vs CLT

The views illustrated in the table below represent points on a continuum, rather than exclusive categories, and most teachers will move back and forth along the continuum in response to the needs of the students and the overall context in which they are teaching.

This is ample evidence to prove that there is no such a thing as 'the communicative approach'. This is not to say that there are no ideas which have evolved over the years which may conveniently be captured by the rubric 'communicative language teaching'. However, there is a large gap between ideas that are set out in books and materials, or that are traded in teacher education courses of various sorts, and ideas as realised at the level of classroom practice. In the following table, I use the term 'traditional' rather than 'non-communicative', as the non-adherents to CLT principle does not mean that communication does not happen.

This diagram demonstrates the fact that communication is an integrated process rather than a set of discrete learning outcomes. This has certainly created a dilemma for language education. It meant that the destination (being able to function in another language) moved much closer together, and, in some instances (for example, in role-plays and simulations) became indistinguishable. The challenge for curriculum developers, syllabus designers, material writers and classroom teachers revolved around decisions associated with the movements between points on the continua set out in the diagram.

Questions such as the following therefore appeared with increasing frequency in teacher-training workshop.

* How could I integrate 'traditional' exercises, such as drills, controlled conversations and the like, with communicative tasks such as discussions, debates, role-plays etc.?

* How do I manage decision-making and the learning process effectively in classroom sessions devoted to communicate tasks which, by definition, require me to handover substantial amounts of decision-making power and control to the learner?

* How can I equip learners themselves with the skill they will need to make decisions wisely, and to embrace power effectively?

For some time after the rise of CLT, the status of grammar in the curriculum was rather uncertain. In the mid 1980s curriculum specialists in fact made deliberate decisions in downgrading the teaching of grammar. Some linguists maintained that it was not necessary to teach grammar, that the ability to use a second language would develop automatically if the learner were required to focus on meaning in the process of using the language to communicate. In recent years, this view has come under serious challenge, and it now seems to be widely accepted that there is value in classroom tasks which requires learners to focus on form. It is also accepted that grammar is an essential resource in using language communicatively. As for grammar, you can bandy about the most intimate parts of the human body as much as you like, but on no account must you allude to the parts of speech!

Thus there is no plausible reason to believe that there is such a clearly defined approach as 'the communicative approach'.

In Sri Lanka this phrase is frequently bandied about by two groups of charlatans, viz English-speaking bureaucrats who lack even a zero knowledge of English teaching but posing themselves as specialists in ELT, the second groups consists of and substandard international consultants who rely heavily on local specialists and quietly slip out before they are found out. If channelled properly the local expertise is good enough for use in any area of English teaching in our country.

A very interesting experience I had with a foreign language specialist still stands out in my memory. An international consultant whom I accompanied to a school in Passara suddenly became a little jittery after watching some English lessons in progress. He hastily walked up to the Principal of the school and ordered him to shoot down immediately all the noisy crows sitting on the wooden partitions of the classrooms. He remarked that the cawing of crows would interfere with the process of second language acquisition of students. He even recorded this statement in the school log book. What an astounding piece of research on Stephen Krashen's Second Language Acquisition Theory!

Contextual factors

The extent to which principles of communicative langauge teaching are realised in the classroom will be determined by a large range of contextual factors.

These factors may belong to the individual classroom, they may be associated with the institution, or they may be brought into the teaching situation from outside. It is useful to know the ways in which contextual factors influence what teachers and learners do in class. In the midst of one or more of these contexts we could identify a family of classroom techniques and procedures which have evolved over the years which have been designed to operationalise changing conceptions of the nature of language and the language learning process.

I would also argue that at the practical day-to-day level of teaching and learning in genuine language classrooms, techniques and procedures are inevitably modified, transformed and adapted by both teachers and learners. At the level of procedure, classroom techniques, practices, and behaviours are inevitably affected by the context in which the teaching and learning takes place.

These contexts could be enumerated as follows:

* Classroom context

* Institutional context

* Systemic context

* Cultural context and

* Socio-economic context

You will now observe that at the level of classroom interaction, plans and teaching intentions are interpreted and reinterpreted as teachers and learners collaboratively construct the curriculum in action. Seen from the perspective of the classroom, debates about whether or not communicative langauge teaching 'works' or indeed 'exists' become simplistic or naive.

In this post communicative era, we should be asking, not whether our classrooms are communicative, but whether the classroom activities we have planned are appropriate to learner needs and curricular goals. Let us not make an issue of the most mechanical language instruction that is gaining currency in Teaching English for Specific Purposes. ESP requires just that in order to match syllabus intentions with utilitarian needs of learners. It is drab and dull instruction, pure and simple and it shuns both value and substance of the language.

English education in contrast operates at a much higher level of language acquisition. It continuously draws its sustenance from its literature and culture.

The second language learner should be sufficiently motivated to gain exposure to the value-system, social and cultural patterns of that target language-drama, music, cinema, food, folk tales, literature and religious practices of the people who use that language. That is the 'educative' value of the second language whether it is English, Japanese, Hindi or Arabic. This kind of language education cannot possibly exist in a second language instruction programme which aims at teaching a language for a specific purpose. Surely education fits one for life, not for a particular purpose or function.

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