English Teaching, Vol. 55 No. 1, 2001
A Web Design Content Course That Holds Students
Accountable for Classroom English
Everette Busbee
(Jeonju University)
Busbee, Everette. (2000). Post-Theory and Method Research: A Web Design
Content Course with Accountability for English. English Teaching, 55(1) 247-267.
This paper details a college 1st-year English content course in Web
design. The course's "surface goal" is computer literacy, and its
"deep goal" is improved English skills. In addition to knowing the
subject matter, the teacher needs TESOL training and/or experience, primarily
in order to be able to control oral presentation enough to maintain its
comprehensibility as the level of English difficulty is gradually increased
over the course. This course teaches English effectively, it is argued, for
three reasons. First is the immediacy and relevancy of classroom communication
(for producing an English Web site) in a situation with more student
accountability for comprehension than in standard language classes. Second is
the relative simplicity of Web design's vocabulary and grammar. Third is skills
integration as students listen to lectures, discuss their work with the
teacher, read HTML instructions, and write Web content. The author argues that,
given English teaching's growing distrust of theory and method and an
accompanying concern about the value of much experimental research (all of
which is reviewed), descriptive research such as this can be the most valuable
for improving classroom teaching, especially if it details complete courses (or
large units) that have worked well for an experienced teacher.
I. INTRODUCTION
What
is possible to achieve in a Korean college English language class that is
well-supplied with computers? Or more modestly, what are some of the things
possible in such a class? Or more specifically, what is possible in such a
class for 1st-year students? "What is possible" questions in EFL are
normally answered narrowly or broadly, with little middle ground. Narrow
answers often originate from controlled experiments investigating a limited
possibility, as in Master's (1996) work on the effect of instruction and
practice on accuracy in the use of the English articles by advanced students.
In this study a group receiving six hours of instruction and practice increased
its average test score from 77 to 83%, and an untreated control group went from
76 to 78%. The difference was significant, and a replication showed similar
results, so we can say it is quite possible to provide six hours of instruction
and practice in the use of the English articles and obtain a four-point increase
on a test over a control group. However, this kind of research result is what
Heilenman (1995) calls into question as being statistically significant without
necessarily being of practical significance. Should we devote some 15% of an
advanced 3-credit EFL course to the articles to get a test score increase of
four points?
The
second type of answer for the question of what is possible, normally generated
by theory, is much broader. An example is that it is possible to teach language
effectively through the intermediate level solely by presenting Comprehensible
Input (CI), with no explicit instruction in language form (Krashen, 1981,
1993). In analyzing such assertions, a teacher can call upon a "sense of
plausibility" that is derived from a personal concept of a causative
relationship between teaching and desired learning, with a "measure of
credibility" involved (Prabhu 1990, p. 172).
To
have meaning for the classroom, answers to "what is possible" should
be both broad and plausible. Breadth can be derived either directly from
theory, or indirectly, as when narrow experimental findings are expanded by
theory into a claimed broad applicability. Rare indeed are controled
experiments that investigated the effectiveness of a broad (that is, extended)
classroom procedure, mainly because such experiments must be large and complex
(and hence expensive) to achieve statistical rigor.
It
is indicative of the state of our field that, try as we may, theory/method and
practice now have little overlap. The past decade has seen such a steady
decline in the status of theory and method that, as Prabhu (1990, p. 173) puts
it, the issue is not whether a certain kind of teaching is "a good or bad
method, but more basically, whether it is active, alive, or operational enough
to create a sense of involvement for both the teacher and the student."
Our sole interest is whether something works.
Research
dedicated to answering the question of possibility should be at the front of
our field, as long as the answers are broad enough to be practically
significant and plausible, and are of a sufficient length to provide a coherent
course or unit, not just one more "teach-nique."
II. Background and Purpose of this Paper
This
paper describes a Korean college 1st-year English course that is computer
based. The "surface goal" of this course is computer literacy, which,
much like English literacy, is a product of time spent "doing it"
with some kind of meaningful purpose. The "deep goal" of the course
is improved English. Although the term "byproduct" is often used for
learning in a content course, I find it difficult to decide whether the
improved English is a byproduct of the process of becoming computer literate,
or whether the computer literacy is a byproduct of the process of improving
English.
Although
I have developed a number of traditional EFL courses in each of the four
language skills at my university over the past nine years, for the past six
years my responsibilities have included developing and teaching major-elective
computer content courses. I also teach a required two-semester advanced
computer sequence, and in addition to the 1st-year Web design course described
in this paper, I have taught Web design to 2nd- and 3rd-year students.
Before
describing the Web design course, I will discuss content courses and why I
think they work -- the high level of communication derived from the accountability
demanded of students. I will then argue that, given the decline in theory and
method in EFL, research reports that describe in detail complete courses or
large units that have worked well for an experienced teacher are have the
greatest potential for improving the effectiveness of English teaching in the
classroom. This requires a short review of the decline of theory and of method
in EFL.
III. COMMUNICATION & ACCOUNTABILITY
One
of the few things our field generally accepts is that English is learned most
efficiently when discourse is real, when learners participate in English
conversation for a real and immediate purpose. A criticism of the traditional
audiolingual approach of PPP -- Present, Practice, Produce -- is that it tended
to ignore the final P (Johnson, 1996). Elis (1993) has even ridiculed PPP as
normally meaning Present, Practice, and more Practice. CLT was supposed to
solve this problem, but has not done so. It is doubtful whether the
artificiality of role play and communicative activities can ever lead to a
genuinely communicative environment.
No
such doubt exists about the communicative environment of a course conducted in
English and dedicated to the subject matter, because this situation requires
authentic communication using the integrated language skills. Writing about a
massive Hong Kong program designed to teach English by using it as the medium
for teaching various academic subjects, Goldstein and Liu (1994, p. 711) wrote
that "today language teaching through content teaching is considered
communicative par excellence."
In
additional to being communicative, a content course, with its easily-tested
subject matter, holds it students more accountable than the typical language
course. Another of the few things our field agrees on is that motivation and
its closely allied expenditure of effort are central in the successful learning
English, and accountability increases motivation to attend to communication.
Such accountability”may explain the success of Total Physical Response (TPR):
Students are motivated to listen intently so they do not continually make
errors that are so publicly visible.
It
could be said that because EFL and content courses both have a grading system,
a differential in grade-oriented accountability should not exist. However, for
EFL courses, it is difficult to correlate a semester grade with effort exerted
and/or learning accomplished during that class. This is because language
learning is cumulative over a period of years, is so complex that gaps in
learning are inevitable, and is performance based so testing is difficult.
Grades for a Web design course, on the other hand, can be better correlated
with effort/learning because the subject can be covered reasonably in one
semester, is relatively and so should not have large gaps in learning, and is
knowledge-based so testing is easy, although a Web site is turned in at the end
of the semester. Students seem to be aware of the difference between grading in
a traditional conversation class and a content course, and they gauge their
effort accordingly.
(Student
motivation to attend to spoken English relates to the issue of CI. I do not
wish to minimize this controversy, but there is a consensus for Sheen's (1994a,
p. 135) conclusion that "Obviously, CI is an essential element of the
acquisition process. The crucial question concerns the sufficiency of CI alone
to bring it about." Although I have never seen it mentioned in the
literature, the crucial parameter is clearly not whether input is comprehensible,
but whether it is comprehended. Ignored CI becomes Incomprehensible
Input. Motivation to understand is central.)
Accountability
relates in another way to the computer in the classroom. Salomon (1984, p. 647)
refers to the "amount of invested mental effort" (AIME) devoted to an
undertaking. He says print is difficult, but television is easy, so students
relate to television shallowly. In an update, Eagleton (1999) contends that if
we allow computer activities to become trivial and do not hold students
accountable for them, computers will be perceived in the same way as
television. Is there as much accountability, for example, in a typical Internet
surfing class, which is after all, given the nature of the Internet, a reading
class, as there is in a typical EFL reading class?
IV. National English Goals and Teacher Qualifications
The
surest way to advanced fluency in English seems to be to study as an
undergraduate abroad for two or more years, although many Koreans obviously do
become fluent within the country through traditional language classes (and just
as obviously this requires concurrent massive individual study -- reading,
listening to tapes, and learning vocabulary). For Korea to attain its goal of a
high national level of English proficiency through study within the nation may
ultimately require a sizable number of rigorous college courses to be taught in
the English medium, primarily by NSs. Such courses are not for all students by
any means, nor even for a majority, but they can become a solid segment of the
English-language program.
For
a content course to be successful depends largely on two things. First is
appropriateness of subject matter, with the goal being subjects that can be
rigorous while not requiring heavy reading or the mastering of complex
concepts. A purely intellectual course such as Introduction to Philosophy or
American History would require extensive reading at a level simply beyond the
capacity of the average student at even the better Korean universities, and the
vocabulary, grammar and concepts would be complex. On the other hand, Web
design is a good candidate, with its "everyday" vocabulary and
grammar, its menu and dialog manipulations that are so conducive to TPR-style
teaching, and its visually-rich realia.
Second
is the qualification of the teacher, who must know not only the subject matter,
but also how to teach English. Snow (1991, p. 326) pointed out that becoming
"familiar enough with the content material to put it to meaningful
use...is one of the most difficult, yet indispensable, requirements of
content-based teaching." But subject-matter knowledge is not enough, for a
Web design course taught by a Web designer freshly in from America would
probably be unsuccessful. The teacher must be able to choose a level of English
-- difficulty of vocabulary and grammar -- and a delivery style that, while
authentic, is designed to make the English input comprehensible. And the
teacher must constantly rachet up the level of English as appropriate for the
increasing level of the students. Probably at least a year or two of reflective
experience teaching EFL classes is needed for teachers to be able to
sufficiently control the English for a content course.
V. Richly-detailed Descriptive Research
Articles
in the "prestigious" EFL journals normally discuss theory or describe
experimental work testing theory, or else describe the effect of a certain
treatment on learning. However, the former may have no pretentions of practical
value in the classroom (Markee, 1997), and the latter, while statistically
significant, often involves small differences of no practical value for
teaching (Heilenman 1995; Lazeraton 1991).
English
teaching's recent reassessment of its theory has seen theory labeled as an
object of suspicion by a leader in the field (Spolsky, 1990), and method has
fared no better. Kumaravadivelu (1994) maintains we are now in a Postmethod
search for an alternative to method instead of an alternative method. There
also appears to be an emergent reassessment of the primacy of experimental
research. In a 1997 interview (Kluge, 1997), Rod Ellis states that a
development in English teaching he is most dubious of is an increasing reliance
on experimental research (which he considers problematic), as opposed to
descriptive research. McLaughlin (1990, p. 618) echoes this, writing that
"experimental research has its value, but I would argue for a catholicity
of outlook when it comes to method -- single-case studies can be more valuable
than carefully controlled laboratory research or large-scale multivariate
analysis in furthering our understanding."
A
further weakness of much EFL experimental research is its low quality. Crookes
(1991, p. 763) says, "We now recognize that many published SL studies are
no more than pilot studies, which would have been greatly improved by doing the
actual study with a decent n [sample] size." Sheen (1994, a and b)
demonstrates how proponents of theories may support their ideas by restating
conclusions drawn by the authors of research reports without critiquing the
rigor of the research -- the isolation of variables, the sample size, the
description of the experimental regimen -- and without looking at research that
supports an alternative view. Even if there is sufficient sample size and good
experimental design, we must still, as Heilenman (1995) suggests, become aware
of the basic limitations of scientific research into the extremely complex area
of SLA.
We
normally think of research rigor as derived from a well-defined experimental
design and an appropriate statistical analysis. A description, however, gains
its rigor from completeness and an unbroken appeal to the reader's sense of
plausibility. Writers who make their claims and draw their conclusions with
meticulous care will tend to retain their credibility, but this credibility can
be squandered with just a single indiscretion.
Of
course this requires a kind of trust that can be abused, but this is not unique
to descriptive research. Experimental research in the field of EFL often
utilizes an already-existing classroom of students as subjects, and because
these students are rarely equal, within-group variation is often striking.
Getting a consistent and cleanly-administered treatment can be difficult with
such students as subjects, when different teachers provide different
treatments, or when the author of the study provides both treatments but
clearly believes more strongly in one of them. However, these problems may be
glossed over. Conclusions may be unwarranted, and a good eye is needed to catch
this, for we are inclined to accept without much question a conclusion based on
the visually powerful p<05, which in fact never tests the validity of an
experimental design.
VI. The Decline of Theory
Chapelle
(1997, p. 20) asks, "Why is there such a dissonance between even the most
technically sophisticated work in CALL and SLA research?" She then
answers, "One reason appears to be a lack of confidence in what SLA
research can reasonably be expected to offer." Another problem with theory
is that it may be so narrow that it offers little of value to the classroom.
Hatch, Shirai, and Fantuzzi (1990, p. 698), to support that the "limited
scope of [SLA] theory is not well recognized," provide a long list of
major areas not touched upon by theory. However, theorists imply that their
theories are broad enough to supply a base for language teaching.
Still,
theoreticians are higher on the pecking order. The attitudes this engenders,
both in the theorists and the practitioners, are predictable. While teachers
make principled decisions based on their students welfare and comply with the
rules laid down by theoreticians, an attitude common among theoreticians is
seen in Long and Richards (1987, p. 27). "A lot of trees have given their
lives in the service of writers of prescriptive pieces on language teaching.
One way of cutting down on the need of so much paper [is] to take account of
theory and research in SLA....SLA theory and research is a more likely source of
sound ideas than convention and intuition. (Teachers intuitions differ
alarmingly.)"
Theorists
carry this denigration of the teacher a step further by failing to include
knowledge gained by the teacher in the classroom (Hatch, Shirai, and Fantuzzi,
1990). It is as if the teacher were invisible.
The
past few years has seen a trend against this feeling of superiority, brought on
by a growing reflection on a haunting fact in the field -- no study of any
convincing size or depth has documented that Communicative Language Teaching
(CLT) produces the results predicted by theoreticians, yet CLT has been the
prevailing paradigm of those theoreticians for many years. Accordingly, the
claims of theorists are being subjected to ever harsher criticism. In a paper dedicated
primarily to getting SLA theory into mainstream language education (and hence a
paper generally positive to theory), Markee (1997, pp. 87-88) quotes Krashen's
(1983, p. 261) claim that given a limited amount of time, "the most
practical, the most valuable information we can provide [teachers] is a theory
of second language acquisition." Markee does not mince words, but
concludes that "the claimed practicality of SLA theories is
nonsense....[M]any SLA researchers do not even accept that their work has any
application to the classroom." Even when they do, "their claims of
practicality usually amount to divisive nonsense”"because they place great
weight on theoretical matters and little weight on the "grounded
insights" of teachers." Markee's respect for teacher insight differs
from that of Long and Richards (1987).
Theory
has suffered a loss in the perception of its value and has even become an
object of suspicion (Spolsky, 1990). An example of the harm a theory may
inflict on teachers (and ultimately students) that most of us are familiar with
is the virtual banning of grammar from the language classroom by such
theoreticians as Krashen (1993, p. 725), who wrote, "In my view, the
research says that the effects of direct instruction are typically short lasting
and do not become part of acquired competence. The effects of grammar teaching
still appear to be peripheral and fragile." This has come under
extraordinary attack, with Schmidt (1990) concluding that we have little
evidence that languages can be learned without being aware of the language, and
that, on the contrary, paying attention to the language may be necessary for
acquisition in an adult.
Fotos
(1994, p. 323) addresses the predicament of language teachers being presented
two opposites as the one truth. "A compelling body of evidence...that
formal instruction on language properties is related to the subsequent
acquisition...present[s] a dilemma for many teachers who have become committed
to the use of communicative approaches to language learning [in which]
teacher-fronted grammar instruction is omitted." But teachers have a
defense. As Pennycook (1991, p. 752) but it, "We can decide that some
teaching practice is good not by asking, Is it communicative? or Is it OK to
teach grammar again now? but by asking what it is we wish to accomplish with
our particular students in our particular contexts."
VII. The Decline of Method
In
our Postmodern Era, incredulity seems to be so woven into the fabric of our
lives that we are allowed, even in such a reputable academic publication as The
Modern Language Journal, to use the condemnatory "nonsense" twice
in one paragraph (Markee, 1997, pp. 87-88). Wilson (1997), an Information and
Learning Technology (ILT) academic, states that we now distrust explanations
meant to cover everything, including grand theories and myths that try to
explain why things in our professions are the way they are. As a result, many
fields, including language teaching, are undergoing a critical self-analysis.
With language teaching, the process seems to have begun with a reanalysis of
our history.
This
history is far from settled, with contemporary writers on the subject generally
falling into two camps, those who see a progression of ever-better methods
(language teaching's "Big Story") and those who see a constant
reshuffling of ancient methods. Kelly (1969, p. ix) writes that we don't really
know "what is new or old in present-day language teaching
procedures," and adds that there is a "vague feeling that modern
experts have spent their time in discovering what other men have
forgotten." Kelly concludes that the entire body of ideas about language
teaching has remained basically unchanged for 2,000 years. In a review of
histories of language teaching, Pennycook (1989) gives examples of writing from
the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. After the spelling is modernized, the
examples could easily be accepted as coming from mainstream articles in our
leading contemporary journals of language teaching. Nothing is new, yet those
of us in the field of language teaching are barraged with books, video and
audio tapes, and software touted as "new and improved."”
The
history of language teaching may be dichotomized as a result of the sizable
overlap of those who write about the history of language teaching and those who
write commercial materials for language teaching. Caravalos (1984) feels that
the failure to remember that new ideas are really old may not be innocent, in
that the huge industry of English teaching will by any means defend it interests,
including its profits.
Kumaravadivelu
(1994, p. 27), referring to a Postmethod Condition, concludes that "After
swearing by a succession of fashionable language teaching methods and dangling
them before a bewildered flock of believers, we seem to have suddenly slipped
into a period of robust reflection." Kumaravadivelu gives three
characteristics of the Postmethod Condition: 1) a search for an alternative to
method rather than an alternative method, 2) teacher autonomy, and 3) a
principled pragmatism that he says is based on Widdowson's (1990, p. 30) idea
that "the relationship between theory and practice can only be realized
within the immediate activity of teaching."
We
do not encounter the results promised by theorists because nothing they offer
is really new. It seems reasonable to suspect that from any period of history,
at least before theorists muddied the water, most wise and experienced old
language teachers who could speak the language they were teaching were probably
teaching about as efficiently as it is possible to teach humans a foreign
language. History indicates it is naive to believe that prior to the 1970s
nobody knew the secret was communication.
VIII. THE WEB DESIGN COURSE
The
"deep goal" of this content course is language learning through many
hours of genuine communication. The effectiveness of this indirect process
diminishes whenever much class time is spent directly teaching and learning
English. Input is therefore always meant to communicate. The "surface
goal" of this course is computer literacy, which, much like English
literacy, seems to be a product of time spent "doing it" with some
kind of meaningful purpose. It is assumed that anyone who has put together a
coherent group of quality Web pages will in the future be able to quickly learn
any computer process, regardless of the subject. (This requires, of course,
that everything on those pages be student-constructed rather than
"stolen" from other pages on the World Wide Web, including buttons,
banners, images, text, and even animations. It also requires that Web pages
consist mainly of student-generated content rather than lists of links that are
more often than not so obvious as to be of little value.) Students use Photoshop
for image production and manipulation, a process involving such in-depth
computer concepts as making a banner via a "tool box," sizing images
by pixels, manipulating RGB color, and compressing images for the Web. Students
also directly code HTML, construct a coherent file structure, and upload and
maintain Web sites with an FTP program.
The
assumption that this leads to broad computer literacy appears to hold up in
subsequent courses: when I introduce CALL programs, students who have taken my
Web design course tend to grasp the mechanics of the programs very quickly. The
rest of this paper will deal solely with the deep goal, the English-learning
goal, of the Web design course.
As
theory and method are not supposed to play much part in this paper, perhaps it
is time to state directly what I think we know about learning and teaching
English for adults, particularly college students:
1.
Success in learning English is directly proportional to the effort expended by
learners. That is, learners who write a lot develop better writing skills,
students who read a lot develop better reading skills, and students who listen
and speak a lot develop better conversational skills. English is learned by
doing English often and in large amounts, and with concentration.
2.
Although it is true that, as Crawford-Lange (1983, p. 95) so elegantly put it,
"Learners should communicate about something: it does not matter about
what," it is still true that effort expended on communication increases
with an increase in the interest of the subject.
3.
Students expend more effort toward listening and reading when the content is of
immediate practical value.
The
Web design course is designed to elicit considerable effort from students to
speak, read, write, and listen to English. This results not from a combination
of communicative activities, pair work, and role play, but from the very nature
of the course, with its interest and accountability. While word processing and
even programming could be turned into a TPR-sort of class, they clearly lack
the interest (and variety of process) of constructing a Web site. In my nine
years of teaching standard college English courses and six years of teaching
computer-based content courses in Korea, content-course students as a whole
approach the English more seriously and expend more effort.
Aside
from appealing to the reader's sense of plausibility, I offer a bit of indirect
evidence: Overseas universities may waive the TOEFL for transfer students who
have successfully completed two years as an undergraduate in an
English-speaking country. No such waiver exists for attending a language school
in an English-speaking country for two years.
Additional
evidence of the superiority of a Web design course comes from the responses to
two questions on a questionnaire I gave at the end of my most recent freshman
Web design class (31 students). The responses were anonymous, and I am
reporting the results of the first question as an indicator of student
frankness.
1.
This class was suddenly changed from a grammar class to a computer class. Was
that a good change or a bad change?
Bad
change (anti-computer), 16
Good
change (pro-computer) 15.
(Given
that they clearly knew my own pro-computer sentiments, this indicates that at
least 16 students did not choose an answer to please me. From later informal
conversation with students from this class, it seems that they felt a grammar
class would have required far less work.)
2.
You also took English Conversation I this semester. Which was more important
for your English, and how much more important?:
English
Conversation - a lot more important, 0
English
Conversation - a little more important, 0
The
same - 0
Web
Design - a lot more important, 31
Web
Design - a little more important, 0
(Such
unanimity is rare in questionnaires.)
1.
THE ENGLISH PRESENTED IN CLASS
Perhaps
the most basic decision to be made by the teacher of any content course is to
what extent the English will be altered for comprehension. There was once a
strong movement, led by theoreticians and methodologist, toward the use of
"authentic materials," with authentic being defined as unaltered
material produced for native speakers. However, Widdowson (1990, p. 163)
defended altered material for the classroom as "a way of short-circuiting
the slow process of natural discovery" so that learning will "happen
more easily and more efficiently than it does in natural surroundings."
And as Swaffar (1985, p. 17) concludes, "The relevant consideration"
for authenticity is whether "there has been an authentic communicative
objective...." Besides, there is not much oral or written material
produced for NSs that is simple enough for typical 1st-year students at any
Korean university. (I will discuss the issue of level of difficulty below.)
Accordingly,
my oral presentation style conforms to Enright's (1991) suggestions as to how
spoken English can be altered for a content class, but these suggestions are
intuitive. A simplified list includes 1) a slower yet natural-sounding rate of
speed, 2) clear enunciation, 3) controlled vocabulary and limited use of
idioms, 4) gestures, 5) repetition, rephrasing, and exemplification, and 6)
checking for understanding.
2.
SOFTWARE
As
the cost of computers has fallen, the cost of software has gained importance.
However, all programs used in this course except Photoshop are either part of
MS Windows (Notepad; Internet Explorer), freeware (Netscape;
Arachnophilia for HTML editing; WS_FTP LE for uploading files), or
standard installations on computers at Korean universities (HWP or MS
Word). Photoshop is expensive, and few universities can afford it
outside Computer Graphics courses. However, Paintshop Pro is far
cheaper, especially for an older version, and is often on college computers. It
offers fewer opportunities for practicing English, but it should suffice.
3.
THE INTEGRATED LANGUAGE SKILLS
The
Web design course integrates the four language skills. Lectures and written
instructions are listened to and read, I have many conversations with
individual students about their Web sites, and student writing usually forms
the heart of their Web sites. Enright (1991, p. 389) notes that "each of
the four language processes" support "learning of the other
processes." "Skill separation," according to Kamaravadivelu
(1994, p. 39) "is a pedagogical artifact that has been shown to be
inadequate for developing integrated functional skills." If we like,
however, we can simply conclude intuitively that dividing the four skills makes
little sense.
1)
LISTENING
Although
language teaching often focuses on practicing speech production, listening has
a history of being recognized as central to language learning. Nida (1957),
after observing how Africans went about learning the language of the tribe they
married into, concluded that learning a language is primarily a process of
learning to hear it. TPR is listening based. Littlewood (1984), in response to
the comprehension-based research of 20 years ago, wrote that speech production
is not as central to the basic learning process as has been assumed, and that
as a consequence, large class size is not as detrimental as once thought.
TPR
is an excellent source of input. TPR may generate visions of happy active
children learning English, and indeed Blair (1993, p. 27) feels that TPR offers
"a less demanding, more leisurely route to the acquisition of
comprehension skills...." I do not know the origin of this myth that TPR
is undemanding, especially given the high public visibility of the confirmation
or disconfirmation of comprehension. In college language education, TPR can be
quite demanding, but it must go beyond the trivial "Stand up. Walk to the
door. Go back to your seat. Sit down." The possibilities of TPR are far
greater, as Blair (1991, p. 27) demonstrates with the following example:
"If today is Friday, Maria will jump up and clap her hands." The
counterpart in a Web design course is "If the image is too dark, slide the
middle triangle to the left."
Moving
from methodology to theory, although Krashen's (1983) assertion that CI alone
will lead to acquisition has come under attack, Sheen (1999a) has stated that
while it is obvious that CI is necessary for acquisition, its sufficiency is
another question. However, to say that it is necessary is essentially meaningless:
it is difficult to imagine learning English without hearing spoken English that
is understandable.
We
can, if we like, strip theory and method from this discussion of listening and
the Web design course: We know our students have difficulty comprehending
spoken English, and we should therefore provide them with a situation in which
they are inclined to listen intently for extended periods to English they can
understand. That is, we learn by doing.
The
lessons presented below are pretty much for bottom-up listening, but the
sentences continually build upon single themes, such as improving scanning. The
goal of top-down comprehension is to help listeners and readers understand
English that is beyond their level of English. However, top-down comprehension is
of limited power and so of limited value. Guessing can lead to many unexpected
-- and often undesirable -- consequences, as I, the husband of a Korean woman,
can attest to. It is obvious that guessing has little value in international
trade, computers, and medicine, and that a job that involves communicating with
native speakers of English requires excellent bottom-up skills.
There
is even evidence that guessing at unknown words is ineffective unless the
guesser knows at least 95% of the vocabulary involved (Laufer, 1989; Liu and
Nation, 1985). This would seem to indicate that top-down skills cannot be put
to any use by beginning and intermediate students. That few of Korea's 1st-year
college students are advanced in indicated by Song's (1999) study of a group of
66 Seoul National University students, mostly 1st-year. With reading material
on the 10th-grade level, the students had an average guessing-corrected
comprehension rate of about 40%, and it appears that the reading speed was
about 75 words per minute, which is less than 20% of the speed that would be
expected of 1st-year American college students. A similar situation seems to
exist in Japan. Yoshida & Kitao (1986, cited in Kitao and Kitao, 1995),
found that a group of [unspecified] Japanese college students who were asked to
quickly read [unspecified] material read 105 words per minute with a
comprehension rate (that I corrected for guessing) of about 40%.
(1)
AN EARLY LESSON: SIMPLE DIRECTIVES
The
following is a typical early lesson, a simple exercise in writing the first
HTML file in Notepad. Comments are in italics.
1.
Open Notepad. How do we open Notepad? (This should be a Total
Physical Response [TPR] exercise, not an exercise in which students duplicate
what they see being done on a big screen. Therefore the teacher should repeat
directions or gives variations several times before demonstrating on the large
screen, which will be valuable in making the verbal input comprehensible.)
First, click the Start button. Then move your mouse up to Programs. Next, move
your mouse to Accessories. Finally, move your mouse to Notepad and
click. (Many opportunities arise during the course to present process
sequences.)
2.
Type this: (The teacher shows a file on the large screen.)
<html>
<head>
<title>Kim
Chul-soo's Page (The teacher says: Use your name.)
</title>
</head>
<body>Hello!
(The teacher says: Choose what you want to say.) </body>
</html>
3.
After you finish typing, save your file. Pull down the File menu. When you get
an injection, the doctor says, "Pull down your pants." (Korean
students almost invariably learned the meaning of the word injection in
high school, but not shot. New NS teachers do not understand this,
because to them shot is the easier word. In fact, the range of Web
design courses I teach -- 1st-year through 3rd-year -- requires that the
teacher present carefully-graded levels of English. Because it would be
impracticable to write out each lecture -- and a reading of the lecture
would not have the life of a spontaneous presentation -- the teacher
must be intimately aware of student language limitations. To teach this course,
a teacher must be knowledgable in both English teaching and Web design.)
Pull down the file menu and click Save. A dialog box will appear. What is a
dialog? Yes, a conversation. Usually, a dialog is between people. But this
dialog is between you and the computer. You tell the computer, "I want to
save this file." (Throughout this, the teacher is aiding comprehension
by pointing to the students, the computer, or himself as he says
"you," "the computer," or "I.") The computer
gives you a dialog box. It asks you some questions. And you answer the
questions. The computer asks. "What do you want to name the file?"
You (Teacher points to students.) answer, "I want to name it
'kim-in-sook.html.'"
Then
the computer asks another question. The computer asks, "Where do you want
to save the file?" You answer, "I want to save it on the
desktop." What is the desktop? (The teacher points to the desktop.)
What color is your computer desktop? Yes, your desktop is black.
Your
computer asks, "Where do you want to save your file." You answer,
"I want to save it on the desktop." So the question is "where to
save the file," and the answer is "save it on the desktop." (This
demonstrates straight repetition, which occurs easily and naturally, and
rewording, a skill a teacher may have to develop. All this adds to the
comprehensibility. Reworded English is itself CI, and this is even true for
straight repetition that is judiciously interspersed throughout the lecture.)
Continue
clicking the folder-with-the-arrow icon. It is at the top of the dialog box.
You will come to the desktop. Check the name and check the desktop. Now hit the
enter key.
Look
for your file on the desktop. Can you find it? Double-click the icon for this
html file. You will see your page in the browser. Is it beautiful? (End of presentation.)
If
the italicized comments were removed, this lecture would be a little over a
page long, including the repetitions. The core of information covered is quite
small, but the amount of input is large, and it has an immediate and practical
use. In Korea, no matter what the university, a student's first content course,
if it is rigorous and taught 100% in English, will normally be the first major
occasion in which English is listened to for information that will have to be
put to use in an immediate and practical manner.
In
addition, the larger meaning of the communication is relevant for many
students. Needing to meet a class requirement (in this case the construction of
a Web site) is a great motivator of students the world over, but for many students
Web site construction is seen as relevant and interesting in itself. Of course
relevance is in the eye of the beholder, but it would appear that a college
student of today who feels constructing a personal Web site is uninteresting
will likely feel that an English conversation class is even less interesting.
At any rate, students know that effort devoted to listening will be reflected
in the quality of their (public) Web site, and that a mediocre Web site will
indicate a casual attitude toward listening. Indifferent listening in an
English conversation class rarely if ever has such clear-cut consequences.
Finally,
this is high-tech TPR. As the teacher gives instructions he walks around the
class and looks at the monitors, which are an immediate indicator of
comprehension. TPR seems to be a way of teaching English that sees more praise
in the journals than use in the classroom. I have asked English teachers why
this is true, and a common response is that the number of commands that can be
given in a classroom are limited. The lecture above includes the following
verbs as directives: check, choose, click, continue, double-click, fill in,
hit, look for, move, name, notice, pull down, save, type, and use.
This just touches upon the possibilities.
(2)
A MIDDLE LESSON: TERMS OF LOCATION
The
sequence of lesson topics is chosen mainly to follow a logical development of
the subject matter. That is, the above lecture must precede a lesson on the
construction of complex HTML tables, and a lesson on the hexadecimal system
must precede the lesson on Web color. However, there is considerable leeway in
deciding when to switch back and forth between Photoshop and Arachnophila
(the HTML editor). If the HTML lesson due next happens to be more difficult
than the next lesson due in Photoshop, the latter can be chosen.
I
will state directly that I am not implying a great leap forward in listening
skills, for I wish to retain my credibility. However, I will report that after
two or three weeks, or about six to nine hours of classes, half to two/thirds
of which is my lecturing TPR-style, most students have made very noticeable
strides in listening. This should be quite plausible to the reader, given that
students cannot escape the demand for intense concentration, which soon becomes
a habit. For my tape-based top-down listening course there is no such gain.
The
following is a lecture appropriate for the middle of the course. Terms of
location are in bold type.
I
will use Photoshop tools to make a banner. Making a banner is easy. Of course
you have to know the tools. Colors and shapes are important, too. If you think
about colors and shapes, your banner will be better.
Here
is the top of the banner, and here is the bottom of the banner.
Here is the right side of the banner, and here is the left side of
the banner. Here is the upper left corner of the banner, and here is the
upper right corner. Here is the lower left corner of the banner, and
here is the lower right corner. Here is the middle of the banner.
I
am putting a small light-blue triangle in the upper right corner. Now I
am putting a large dark-red circle in the lower left corner. Below the
light-blue triangle, I am putting a small light-green rectangle. To the left
of the rectangle I am putting a medium-purple oval. Above the oval I
am putting three very small circles. I am making the left circle black.
I am making the right circle white. I am making the middle square
medium-gray. I am writing xyz inside the large dark square. And I am
putting the number 125 to the right of the red square. (Here follows
a 10-minute TPR lesson involving instructions from the above lecture.)
A
limitation of conversation classes is providing sufficient practice to make
comprehension instant and automatic. The TPR lesson that follows the lesson
above reinforces the patterns, and when the teacher later demonstrates drawing
a banner, the patterns will be reinforced again. And note that although the
vocabulary in this lesson is simple, even advanced English students in Korea
often have trouble with verbal descriptions of location, and also with the
"everyday English" of "putting your name at the end"
or "making the first word larger." Finally, everything in this
lesson involves useful English. The computer, Photoshop, and English are
being learned, but computer terminology and jargon are hardly involved.
(3)
A LATE LESSON: SIMPLE "IF" PATTERNS
A
single program like Photoshop can provide a variety of grammatical
patterns limited only by the imagination of the teacher. The following
"if" patterns are examples. Notice how a teacher can present the same
pattern many times. With Photoshop, the pattern "If you want the
photo to be ____, then increase (or some other computer action) the
________." has dozens of possible completions.
If
you want the photo to be larger (or smaller), then increase (or decrease) the
scan percentage).
If
you want the text to be larger (or smaller), then increase (or decrease) the
number in inside text="3".
Here
are other "if" patterns that can be used. But one basic guideline is
that for any particular lesson, only one pattern should be used, or else
students will tend to blend the grammar of different pattern. This is
especially true for 1st-year students.
If
the scan is still too fuzzy, you should sharpen it more.
If
the colors are still too dull, you should brighten them more.
2)
READING
Web
material can be assigned for reading, but it should be simple. It is sometimes
easy to forget that for some material, such as how to bake a cake, 100%
comprehension is the goal, and there is probably not much practical difference
between the results of a recipe 80% understood and one 60% understood -- both
results are inedible. Further, for this class I wanted students to gain
information via reading and re-reading perhaps a time or two, not via laborious
translation. Again I point to Song's (1999) work with 1st-year Seoul National
students that indicates such low reading comprehension rates for even 10th
grade material that their reading has no practical value as a reliable source
of information.
The
following is from a downloaded Web tutorial written for "kids."
Notice how repetitive the patterns are, and this is "authentic
material."
You
can place the words wherever you want inside their cells by using the align command.
Let's take a look:
align=right
pushes everything against the right side.
align=left
pushes everything against the left side.
align=center
centers everything in the middle.
But
there's more! We can also line stuff up vertically, pushing it to the top,
bottom, or middle of the cells. We use valign:
valign=top
pushes everything to the top of the cell.
valign=bottom
pushes everything to the bottom of the cell.
valign=middle
centers everything in the middle vertically.
3)
WRITING
The
subject of the writing for the Web site is determined by the student, which of
course personalizes it and adds to its relevance. The daughter of a bakery
owner made a Web site dedicated to bread. The producer of a drama by the
English Education Drama Club constructed a site based on the detailed
description of the production. A woman whose large telescope attests to her
interest in astronomy built a huge site about the stars. Other ambitious sites
were about butterflies, trips to the Chirri Mountains, flowers, aviation, and
remote-controlled models. Most students included descriptions and photos of their
families and friends.
Writing
is an on-going project throughout the semester, with regular deadlines for
emailing me work in progress. Deadlines keep the students writing regularly and
also allow the teacher to escape editing everything at the last minute. Some
students write quite a lot (although not nearly so much, of course, as in a
composition class), and they seem to enjoy seeing their sites grow. Other
students, however, write as little as possible, and end up with unfocused Web
sites based almost entirely on graphic images.
4)
SPEAKING
As
I wrote above, the Web design course is primarily input-based. However, with my
class sizes running from about 15 to just over 30, there is considerable
opportunity for oral production. I keep students on their toes by asking quick
questions throughout the class, and I "train" students to ask
questions if they do not understand. While students are doing such things as
going through written Web tutorials or scanning images, I spend time visiting
students to talk about their Web pages, and I normally pull the neighboring
students into the discussion. Students do talk in class, and the speech is
immediately relevant, and because students know that comprehension is
important, meaning is often negotiated.
IX. CONCLUSIONS
The
central idea of this paper, that a Web design course is a good vehicle for
teaching English, has as its theoretical foundation the modest and
uncontroversial idea that students who work hard doing English learn better.
The methodological foundation is equally modest: a trained language teacher
uses the scaffolding of a Web design content course to set up interesting
situations in which students have an immediate need to communicate in all four
language skills, motivated by a combination of personal pleasure and
accountability. It is of course true that not all students find pleasure in the
construction of a Web page, nor do all students respond responsibly to
accountability. However, these students would hardly be more interested in, nor
respond more responsibly to, a traditional conversation class with a
traditional text.
Given
the growing importance of computers in our economic lives, the byproduct of the
Web design course -- computer literacy -- is a worthy one. Being able to use a
computer for one complex process implies the ability to quickly put those
skills to use in other computer processes, much like learning to use English to
communicate about one complex subject implies the ability to quickly put those
skills to use in communicating about other subjects.
This
description of the Web design course is meant to provide enough detail to
"test" its plausibility, and to put it, or part of it, to use in the
classroom. This kind of publication is the most valuable for teachers, not
descriptions of statistically-backed but narrow experiments, and not
publications describing programs that, while broad, are backed only by
someone's theory. Long and Richards (1987, p. 27) admonish that "SLA
theory and research is a more likely source of sound ideas than convention and
intuition." They then interject that "Teachers' intuition differ
alarmingly." I think it is more valid as "Teachers' intuition is a
more likely source of sound ideas than SLA theory and research," because
it is obvious that "Theoreticians' ideas differ alarmingly." The
heart of the art of teaching remains an experienced teacher's intuition
tempered by reflection.
REFERENCES
Blair,
R. W. (1991). Innovative Approaches. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.). Teaching
English as a Second or Foreign Language (pp. 23-45). Boston: Heinle and
Heinle.
Bork,
A. (1996). Viewpoint: Rebuilding Universities with Highly Interactive
Multimedia Curricula. Int. J. for Engineering Ed., 12(5), 320-332.
Caravolas.
J. (1984). The Gutenberg of Pedagogy: Comenius and the Teaching of Language.
Montreal: Guérin.
Chapelle,
Carol (1997). Call in the year 2000: Still in search of research paradigms? Language
Learning & Technology, 1(1), pp. 19-43.
Crawford-Lange,
L. (1982). Curricular alternatives for second language learning. In T. V.
Higgs, (Ed.), Curriculum, Competence, and the Foreign Language Teacher.
Skokie: National Textbook Co., pp. 81-113.
Crookes,
Graham (1991). Research issues commentary: Power, effect size, and second
language research. TESOL Quarterly, 25(4), 762-765.
Eagleton,
Maya. B. (1999). The Benefits and Challenges of a Student-Designed School
Website. Reading Online: An Electronic Journal. Retrieved Jan. 12, 2000
from the WWW: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/eagleton/introduction.html.
Ellis,
R. 1993. Talking Shop: Second Language Acquisition Research: How Does it help
Teachers? ELT Journal, 47, 3-11.
Enright,
D. S. (1991). Supporting children's English language development in grade-level
and language classrooms. In Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.). Teaching English as a
Second or Foreign Language (pp. 386-402). Boston: Heinle and Heinle.
Fotos,
S.S. (1994). Integrating grammar instruction and Communicative Language use
through grammar consciousness-raising tasks. TESOL Quarterly, 28(2),
323-346.
Goldstein,
Lawrence, and Liu, N. F. (1994). An integrated approach to the design of an
immersion program. TESOL Quarterly, 28(4), 705-725.
Hatch,
Evelyn, Yasuhiro Shirai, and Cheryl Fantuzzi (1990). The need for integrated
theory: connecting modules. TESOL Quarterly, 24(4), 697-716.
Heilenman,
L. Kathy (1995). Grammar. In Vicki Galloway and Carol Herron (eds.). Research
within Reach II: Research-guided Responses to the Concerns of Foreign Language
Teachers. Valdosta, GA: Southern Conference on Language Teaching.
Johnson,
Keith (1996). Language Teaching and Skill Learning. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kelly,
L. G. (1969). 25 Centuries of Language Learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury
House.
Kitao,
K., & Kitao, S. K. (1995). English Teaching: Theory, Research, Practice.
Tokyo: Eichosha.
Kluge,
David (1997). Interview with Rod Ellis. The Language Teacher, 22(12),
37-42.
Krashen,
Steven (1981). Second language acquisition, and second language learning.
New York: Permagon Press.
Krashen,
Steven (1983). Second language acquisition theory and the preparation of
teachers. In J. Alatis, H. H. Ster, and P. Strevens (Eds.), Georgetown
University Roundtable on linguistics 1983 (pp. 255-263)). Washington:
Georgetown University Press.
Krashen,
Steven (1993). The effects of formal grammar teaching: Still peripheral. TESOL
Quarterly, 27(4), 722-725.
Laufer,
B. (1989). What percentage of text-lexis is essential for comprehension? In C.
Lauren and M. Nordman (Eds.) Special language: From human thinking to
thinking machines. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Lazeraton,
A. (1991). Power, effect size, and second language research. TESOL Quarterly,
25(4), 759-762.
Liu,
N. and Nation, I. S. P. (1985). Factors affecting guessing vocabulary in
context. RELC Journal, 16(1), 33-42.
Kumaravadivelu,
B. (1994). The postmethod condition: (E)merging strategies for second/foreign
language teaching. KOTESOL Quarterly, 28(1), 27-48.
Master,
P. (1994). The effect of systematic instruction on learning the English article
system, in T. Odlin, (Ed.), Perspectives on Pedagogical Grammar.
Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Markee,
Numa (1997). Second language acquisition research: A resource for changing
teachers professional cultures. Modern Language Journal, 81(1), 80-93.
McLaughlin,
Barry (1990). "Conscious"” versus "Unconscious"” learning. TESOL
Quarterly, 24(4), 617-634.
Nida,
E. A. (1957). Learning by listening. Reprinted in R. Blair (Ed.), (1982). Innovative
approaches to language teaching. New York: Newberry House.
Pennycook,
Alastair (1991). Response to comments on Alastair Pennycooks "The Concept
of method, interested knowledge, and the politics of language teaching." TESOL
Quarterly, 25(4), pp. 749-754.
Prabhu,
N. S. (1990). There is no best method -- why? TESOL Quarterly, 24(2),
161-176.
Salomon,
G. (1984): Television is easy and print is tough: the differential investment
of mental effort in learning as a function of perceptions and attribution,
Journal of Educational Psychchology, 18, 42-50.
Schmidt,
R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied
Linguistics, 11, 129-158.
Sheen,
Ron (1994a). A critical analysis of the advocacy of the task-based syllablus. TESOL
Quarterly, 28(1), 127-151.
Sheen,
Ron (1994b). Response to comments on "A critical analysis of the advocacy
of the task-based syllabus."” TESOL Quarterly, 28(4), 790-795.
Snow,
M. A. (1991). Teaching language through content. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.). Teaching
English as a Second or Foreign Language (pp. 315-346). Boston: Heinle and
Heinle.
Song,
Mi-Jeong (1999). Reading strategies and second language reading ability: The
magnitude of the relationship. English Teaching, 54(3), 73-95.
Spolsky,
Bernard, 1990. The scope and form of a theory of second language acquisition. TESOL
Quarterly, 24(4), 609-616.
Swaffar,
J. K. (1985). Reading authentic texts in a foreign language: A cognitive model.
The Modern Language Journal, 69(1), 15-34.
Widdowson,
H. G. (1990). Aspects of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Wilson,
B. G. (1997). The Postmodern Paradigm, in C. R. Dills and A. A. Romiszowski
(Eds.), Instructional development paradigms. Englewood Cliffs NJ:
Educational Technology Publications.