editorial, rough draft

The focus in language instruction needs to shift from giving grammar, and reading and writing as much attention as listening and speaking in the early stages in foreign language courses taught at U.S. universities. This should be replaced with the more effective ‘natural communication” methods promoted by Stephen Krashen, an expert in the field of linguistics who specializes in theories of language acquisition and development at the University of California. (http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html)

I am a native speaker of English, a teacher of English as a second language, and a student of Mandarin Chinese. In my experiences as both a learner and a teacher, I have found difficulties dealing with both student and teacher expectations. In my Chinese classes, the students were expected to learn the four proficiencies (listening, speaking, reading, writing) equally at the same time.

As a teacher of English as a second language, I had to deal with the differing expectations of English language students who not only had varying levels of English proficiency, but were expecting rigid, grammar-based lessons. They wanted rules to memorize.

I learned how to teach English as a second language at Oakland University. In my classes, we learned that the old “grammar translation” method of teaching was no longer the favored method. The new theories put forth by Krashen and others focus on communication-based, real-world English. Linguists like Noam Chomsky teach of concepts like “Universal Grammar”, wherin everyone, no matter what their native language is, knows fundamentally how to put words together to create meaning. These theories bring a different, more natural approach to language teaching and acquisition. Another fundamental difference between how English is taught and how foreign languages are taught is how soon reading and writing is brought to center stage.

As anyone knows, when we learn our native language as babies, we don’t learn to read, write, speak and listen all at the same time. Babies listen first; imitate what they hear, begin to produce language in spoken form, and finally learn to read and write. The later, continues to be a subject of study throughout adulthood for many as any university student of literature or rhetoric can attest.

As teachers of language, we have to remember why students are taking a foreign language in the first place; to be able to functionally communicate in the target language. As Krashen puts it: "The best methods are therefore those that supply 'comprehensible input' in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are 'ready', recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production." Stephen Krashen (http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html)

There has been a lot of study done in teaching English as a second language. I don’t know if as much effort has been put forth in other languages that are taught to native English speakers in American universities, but obviously the same concepts championed by Krashen and others for teaching English should apply to native English speakers attempting to learn a second language.

There are examples of this focus shift outside the classroom. In my Chinese studies, one of the most effective learning tools I found is ChinesePod.com. Part of Praxis Language, Chinese Pod offers a learning experience unlike that which I found at Oakland University, who’s curriculum is based on the “Integrated Chinese” system originating from the Chinese School of the East Asian Summer Language Institute at Indiana University. Chinese Pod uses an audio podcast with a short dialogue, followed by an idiomatic translation and discussion of relevant cultural aspects of the vocabulary. A paid subscription provides the student with transcriptions in PDF form with English, Pinyin (a Romanized form of Chinese), traditional and simplified characters, and various study tools including one-one lessons with Chinese teachers. Chinese Pod focuses on input in the early stages which mimics 1^st language learning.

The Integrated Chinese method, adopted by OU, expresses their philosophy as: “The Chinese title of Integrated Chinese, reflects our belief that a healthy language program should be a well-balanced one, paying attention to all four skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing.”

The problem with this method is that reading and writing are far more difficult that listening and speaking. I spent so much time trying to memorize characters so that I could pass quizzes and tests that after 3 semesters, I could barely speak a complete sentence that wasn’t one of the memorized dialogues from the book. Real conversational meaningful language production was absent. I could not express concepts or thoughts in the target language. Frustrated, I quit after the third semester. I continue my Chinese language studies through ChinesePod. In speaking with my former classmates, I find the same frustrations felt by all. I don’t know if Spanish, German, or other languages are taught the same way, but I suspect they are.

Works cited

Electronic resource: (http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html) accessed 11/24/08

Electronic resource: (http://chinesepod.com/) accessed 11/24/08

Electronic resource: (http://eall.hawaii.edu/yao/icusers/) accessed 11/24/08