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Research Issues Editor
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DEBORAH GREEN, University of Washington
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VOLUMES MENU
TESOL QUARTERLY
CONTENTS
To print, select PDF page
ARTICLES nos. in parentheses
Rethinking Communicative Language Teaching:
Reflection and the EFL Classroom 9 (10-28)
William L. Tarvin and Ali Yahya Al-Arishi
The TESOL Methods Course 29 (30-50)
Christine Uber Grosse
Oral Communication in TESOL:
Integrating Speaking, Listening, and Pronunciation 51 (52-76)
John M. Murphy
A Content Comprehension Approach to Reading
English for Science and Technology 77 (78-105)
Thom Hudson
Maximizing Student Performance in Summary Writing:
Managing the Cognitive Load 105 (106-122)
Margaret R. Kirkland and Mary Anne P. Saunders
Twenty-Five Years of Contrastive Rhetoric:
Text Analysis and Writing Pedagogues 123 (124-144)
Ilona Leki
REVIEWS
Recent Publications on the Crises in U.S. Classrooms
Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements
of America’s Underprepared 145
Mike Rose
Small Victories
Samuel G. Freedman
Reviewed by Vivian Zamel
Forked Tongue: The Politics of Bilingual Education
Rosalie Pedalino Porter
Reviewed by Suzanne Irujo
The Second Language Curriculum
Robert Keith Johnson
Reviewed by Barbara L. Boyd
TOEFL Test of Written English (TWE) Scoring Guide
Educational Testing Service
Reviewed by Bonny Norton Peirce
BOOK NOTICES
Whose Country Is This, Anyway? Teaching Resources
from Amnesty to Citizenship 165
Lenore Balliro, Guest Editor
A Citizenship Educator’s Resource Handbook, Joan LeMabre (Ed.)
(Lenore Balliro)
Content Area ESL: Social Studies, Dennis Terdy (Janet Isserlis)
Coyote: A Journey Through the Secret World of America’s Illegal Aliens,
Ted Conover (Lenore Balliro)
A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn (Sandra Morra)
Toward Participation: A Sample Citizenship Lesson Plan, Linda Monteith, Sidney
Pratt, and Jean Unda (Lenore Balliro)
“Let’s Make a Deal”: A Guide to Teaching About Taxes, Judy Hikes, Barbara
Garner, Helen Jones, Susan Romaine, and JoAnne Wheeler (Richard Levy)
Work Plays: You and Your Rights on the Job, Labor Education Center
(Lucille Fandel)
Curriculum for Citizenship, Sandra Morra (Richard Levy)
Urgent Care for ESL/Civics Teachers: Lesson Planning for Fostering Cooperative
Interaction Among Amnesty Students, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
(Lenore Balliro)
Making Amnesty Work: Joint Efforts to Meet the Needs of Newly Legalized
Workers, Heide Spruck Wrigley and Katherine A. Brady (Richard Levy)
Methods in English Language Teaching: Frameworks and Options,
Waldemar Marton (Jacquelyn Milman)
THE FORUM
The Use of the Concept of Cultural Sensitivity
in Teacher Evaluation: A Case Study 195
Harry Krasnick
Research Issues
The Role of Hypothesis Testing in Qualitative Research 200
A Researcher Comments . . .
Polly Ulichny
Another Researcher Comments . . .
Richard K. Blot
Editor's Note
The silver cover of this volume heralds the TESOL Quarterly’s 25th
year. Articles in each of the four issues survey the history and current state
of the field. In celebration of this benchmark anniversary, the Summer and
Autumn issues are entirely devoted to state-of-the-art discussions by
distinguished colleagues. The TESOL Quarterly staff takes this oppor-
tunity to congratulate our fellow members on our silver anniversary.
In this Issue
IN THIS ISSUE 5
with causes for concern, Grosse finds reason for optimism trends to
accommodate the educational needs of individual teachers, a new
emphasis on the preparation of “reflective” teachers, and “a recogni-
tion of teachers’ abilities to solve their own problems.”
• John Murphy argues for the integration of instruction in speaking,
listening, and pronunciation. Although relative degrees of emphasis
may vary depending on the instructional context, Murphy character-
izes oral communication processes as “reciprocally interdependent.”
To facilitate integrated instruction, he presents teachers with a
comprehensive list of oral communication activities arranged by
proficiency level and relative focus on accuracy or fluency.
• Thom Hudson reports on an ESP reading program that emphasizes the
role of content comprehension. The REST Project at the University of
Guadalajara, Mexico, developed a curriculum around thematic units
that parallel undergraduate course content. After instruction in the
content comprehension approach, student scores were significantly
higher on three reading subtests: reading grammar, reading compre-
hension, and cloze.
• Margaret Kirkland and Mary Anne Saunders provide an overview of
external and internal constraints on summarizing. Among external
constraints are purpose, audience, discourse conventions; internal
constraints include L2 proficiency, schemata, cognitive skills. Kirkland
and Saunders conclude that summarizing is a “highly complex, recursive
reading-writing activity” whose cognitive demands should be managed
if they are not to adversely affect student performance. The authors
suggest pedagogical approaches to “mediating the cognitive load.”
• Ilona Leki surveys 25 years of contrastive rhetoric, noting pitfalls and
promise within the research tradition. She reminds us that contrastive
rhetoric studies provide an important salutary perspective: They
highlight the fact that notions of good, authentic, clear, or convincing
writing “have no reality outside a particular cultural and rhetorical
context.”
Also in this issue:
• Reviews: Vivian Zamel reviews recent publications on the crises in
U.S. classrooms: Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundaries: The Struggles
and Achievements of America’s Underprepared and Samuel G.
Freedman’s Small Victories. Suzanne Irujo reviews Rosalie Porter’s
Forked Tongue: The Politics of Bilingual Education; Barbara Boyd
reviews Robert Johnson’s The Second Language Curriculum; and
Bonny Peirce reviews the Educational Testing Service’s TOEFL Test
of Written English (TWE) Scoring Guide.
• Book Notices: Teaching resources for amnesty and citizenship
instruction are the focus of all but one of this issue’s book notices for
which Lenore Balliro has been the guest editor.
6 TESOL QUARTERLY
• Brief Reports and Summaries: Richard Light and Wan Teh-yuan
examine the perceptions, language skills, and academic records of 56
Soviet undergraduate exchange students studying in U.S. colleges;
Ellen Lipp and J. Penny Wheeler survey students’ reading interests;
and Roger Griffiths reports a study that examines speech rates of
native-speaking teachers addressing nonnative-speaking students.
• The Forum: Harry Krasnick argues that the concept of cultural
sensitivity may not be ready for use in teacher evaluation. In the
subsection Research Issues, Polly Ulichny and Richard Blot comment
on the role of hypothesis testing in qualitative research.
Sandra Silberstein
IN THIS ISSUE
TESOL QUARTERLY, Vol. 25, No. 1, Spring 1991
Rethinking Communicative
Language-Teaching: Reflection
and the EFL Classroom
WILLIAM L. TARVIN and ALI YAHYA AL-ARISHI
King Saud University-Abha
9
places great emphasis on what the philosopher John Locke termed
the first source of knowledge—sensation. Many of the activities
arising from Total Physical Response (TPR), the Silent Way,
Suggestopedia, and activities designed to accommodate the
affective domain, exploit the senses in promoting language
acquisition. Through these activities, there is an implicit recognition
that, as Locke maintains in An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, a person first begins to think “when he [/she] first
has any sensation” (Locke, 1706/1961, II.i.23). Conspicuous-action
classrooms use the seen color, the heard sound, the felt warmth, and
the smelled odor—and the physical responses to these sensations—
to develop what Locke called the “simple ideas of sense” (II.ii.1). A
lesson integrating several of these types of activities, Richard-
Amato (1988) writes, is one in which “through the highly compre-
hensible input, the physical involvement, and the sensual quality of
the words and action, the students become completely absorbed in
the activity, making acquisition highly probable” (p. 185).
Richard-Amato (1988) offers as an illustration of integrative
communicative language teaching (CLT) a series of classroom
activities centered around a Mexican folktale about an imaginary
bird, the pájaro-cu. In this story the bird is featherless, and its
nakedness offends the king of the birds, the eagle, who threatens to
send it into exile. The other birds take pity on the pájaro-cu and
clothe its nakedness by contributing from their own feathers. The
resultant bird sees itself as so beautiful that it becomes vain and
disdainful of the other birds and finally exiles itself. The other birds
go to look for the lost bird, but do not expect to find it.
One of the recommended follow-up activities to the reading of
the tale is a discussion of its meaning, but most of the activities deal
with reducing a reflective story to a sensual event. Students are
shown pictures of colorful birds, they pantomime the movement of
birds, and they role-play the different types of birds. Following a
lesson in watercolor, each student is asked to paint a picture of the
missing pájaro-cu. The lost imaginary bird must be found and
placed in a real sensuous world of primary colors.
In such an approach, nothing can be illusive or elusive in the
symbolic sense that Thoreau considered when he wrote, “I long ago
lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their
trail” (1854/1966, p. 11). In the pájaro-cu unit, activities have not
been generated which explore what Locke terms the second source
of knowledge, reflection, where the mind “turns its view inward
upon itself and observes its own actions about those ideas [of
sensation] it has [and] takes from thence other ideas” (Locke, 1706/
1961, II.vi.1). Schopenhauer calls these “ideas of reflection” or
10 TESOL QUARTERLY
“ideas of ideas” (Vorstellungen von Vorstellungen) (Gardiner, 1973,
p. 327), whereby we think about and communicate the contents of
phenomenal experiences. The pájaro-cu unit activities take the
phenomena of the story (the colors, the movement, the other
physical actions of the birds, etc.) and recreate or reproduce them
(through pictures, pantomime, music, dancing, and drawing).
Absent are activities which encourage “ideas of ideas,” where
phenomenal experience begets conceptual realization: the nature of
prejudice (the physically different bird must be exiled), kindness
(the charitable contributions of the other birds), vanity (the
transition of the pitiable bird to the pompous bird), irony (the bird
who resented the eagle-imposed exile finally opts for self-exile), and
the search for beauty or self (the birds’ futile quest for the beautiful
lost pájaro-cu to which each had given a part of itself).
What we propose to do in this article is first to discuss the status
of reflection as a source of knowledge in CLT. Then we will
examine what is involved in reflective thinking, which will serve as
a prelude to a discussion of three types of activities which we have
found encourage reflection among our EFL students. (Being
teachers in Saudi Arabia, we do not teach ESL students. )
12 TESOL QUARTERLY
To convey an understanding of the second nonreflection procliv-
ity in CLT, we will begin with the most palpable failure of audio-
lingualism, the inability of its trainees to speak English beyond the
controlled environment of the language lab. The least modification
in the stimulus (a “Hiya” instead of the expected “Hello” or “Hey”)
could militate against a response and forestall communicative inter-
action. To remedy this audiolingual failure, CLT advocates set
one basic goal, variously expressed: the “creative” use of language
in “a wide range of communicative situations” (Savignon, 1983,
pp. 23-24), “free, spontaneous interaction” (Rivers, 1983, p. 55),
“communicative confidence” (Canale & Swain, 1980, p. 378), etc.
Hypotheses were formulated to account for the failure of audio-
lingualism to reach the goal of spontaneous, creative communica-
tive competence. Most of these involved a dichotomy, sometimes
represented as a continuum:
— Krashen’s (1982) contrast between acquisition involving un-
conscious processes and learning involving conscious or
monitored processes
— Ellis’s (1986) primary processes (those using automatic rules in
unplanned discourse) and secondary processes (those using
analyzed rules in planned discourse)
— Littlewood’s (1984) lower-level language operations which
“unfold automatically” from “ready-made plans available in
long-term memory” and higher-level operations which are
“composed consciously in the light of the speaker’s immediate
communicative intentions” (p. 75)
Although the validity of aspects of these hypotheses has been
challenged (Ellis, 1990), the principal implication for language
teaching of this dichotomizing has been to direct attention from
higher-level, conscious, monitored learning, and rule-analyzing
secondary processes to lower-level, unconscious acquisition, and
automatic-rule primary processes. Classroom activities were
designed to promote an automatic apprehension and use of the
target language, that is, an intuitive grasp of the language. Intuition,
as a source of knowledge, is defined as “immediate apprehension”
and is sometimes called “prelinguistic knowledge” (Rorty, 1973,
pp. 204-206). Manifestations of a concern for an intuitive grasp of a
language are brainstorming, fast-writing, and talking-off-the-top-
of-your-head activities, which in some CLT classrooms have
become measurements of a student’s ability to interact and
participate. Such manifestations exemplify the use of what the
14 TESOL QUARTERLY
This quotation from Breen and Candlin is testament of a
concern in CLT with the importance of developing reflection-
oriented activities. Other examples may be cited. Curran (1972)
writes that students want “time to find, on their own, the
required word or phrase” (p. 33) and incorporates a reflective
phase in his Counselling-Learning/Community Language
Learning model. When Stern (1975), Rubin (1975), and Beebe
(1983) include among the characteristics of good language
learners that they make calculated guesses and take reasonable
risks, it is the qualifying adjectives which emphasize that a
degree of reflection, not off-the-hip shooting, makes these
learners successful. Other reflection-oriented activities are
Carton’s (1971) skill of “inferencing,” Savignon’s (1983)
discovery learning, involving the use of deductive and
inductive reasoning, and Richard-Amato’s (1988) word-focus
games, although the last two writers, we feel, put too much
emphasis on the need for these activities to take place in a
group interfactional setting. Recent research on metacognitive
strategy training (Carrell, Pharis, & Liberto, 1989; Wenden &
Rubin, 1987) reports on activities designed to develop learning
strategies among ESL students and to promote learner
consciousness of the reasoning processes. What we hope to do
in a later section of this paper is to coalesce some of these ideas
about the use of reflective thinking in the CLT classroom,
believing that this third source of knowledge has a value as
distinct as the other two, phenomenalism and intuition.
WHAT IS REFLECTION?
Before discussing the types of activities which promote reflection
in EFL classrooms, we will first present a conceptualization of
reflection.
16 TESOL QUARTERLY
Common to the answers to our questions about reflection are:
1. Reflection originates when the mind is confronted with a
problem or other extraordinary situation.
2. In confronting this situation, the mind integrates such functions
as defining, comparing, abstracting, generalizing, and essential-
ity-seeking; these processes allow the mind to make an
evaluation or judgment, not just a simple intuitive response.
3. As a result, the problem has a better solution since potential
weaknesses and errors have been confronted and the extraordi-
nary situation has a richer, more essential, meaning.
A consideration of these three points about reflection, we believe,
can improve the design of CLT activities and thus promote better
target language acquisition. The first point establishes that most
communicative situations do not need reflective thinking; an
intuitive, automatic response suffices. However, certain extraordi-
nary situations are best handled through a more deliberate,
reflective approach. We believe that some CLT activities need to be
examined to determine if they are encouraging students to give
intuitive responses in communicative situations where the students
would prefer to give a delayed, postreflection response. We need to
avoid suggesting to students that unreflective uses of language are
always best.
The second point establishes what mental faculties are used in
reflection. We believe that at present CLT with its emphases on
conspicuous action and spontaneous response has unintentionally
slighted the need and desire of language learners to abstract,
generalize, and synthesize. When CLT does use reflective-thinking
activities, the activities tend to be task-oriented and do not allow
students to expand the use of their reflective faculties by examining
a metacognitive process or by synthesizing experiences.
The third point establishes that the value of reflection is personal;
it brings an inner satisfaction that one has done one’s best to
confront an extraordinary situation. In the language classroom, we
believe that activities which allow for the use of introspection
before interaction will enhance a student’s self-image because the
student will have achieved a private fruition through intrapersonal
testing, thereby eliminating certain first-notion responses. Conse-
quently s/he will approach the valuable public negotiation of mean-
ing with greater confidence. These general benefits of a greater use
of reflective thinking in CLT will be expanded and particularized in
the following section on types of reflective activities.
Task-Oriented Activities
Task-oriented activities involving reflective thinking, the
principal type presently used in CLT, lead students to discover
answers for themselves. In such activities, a problem is solved, a
question is answered, a conflict is resolved, a rule is formed, or a
principle is exemplified. The task can involve the use of either
inductive or deductive reasoning. Savignon’s (1983) description of
an inductive-reasoning activity in a Spanish class is typical: She
gives her students some sentences related to adjective agreement
and the following instructions: “Working in small groups or pairs
study the above sentences. What rule can you give to explain the
different forms of the adjective norteamericano?” (p. 190).
This description suggests that there are three stages in a task-
oriented activity: (a) encountering the data, (b) processing it in a
communal setting, and (c) producing a solution. The activity is
close-ended because the emphasis is on the result, the point of
eureka. We prefer a four-stage progression of our task-oriented
activities, with an emphasis on the first stage:
1. Establishing need and desire. We believe that activities are best
structured by first establishing student need and desire for the
activity. We assume that it is difficult for one to take seriously
and reflect upon activities that one has not in some way made
one’s own.
2. Shaping activities through student involvement. Just as student
need and desire should determine whether an activity will
proceed, students should also be involved in determining how
the activity will proceed. We believe that students should be
given a choice of the type of activity they wish to use; for
instance, whether it is to be a one-way information-gap task
where students are not required to pool information in solving
the problem, or a two-way information-gap task where the
participants must share information to solve the problem (Ellis,
1990).
Most CLT task-oriented activities use the latter, resulting in an
interpersonal group-discovery, but for most individuals the point
of eureka remains a solitary, triumphant confirmation. We
18 TESOL QUARTERLY
believe that students should be allowed to experience both
satisfaction-through-group exploration and the exhilaration of
individual achievement.
3. Hypothesis formulating. A task-oriented activity should allow
students to formulate hypotheses arising from the use of such
mental functions as defining, comparing, sorting, abstracting,
and evaluating. That is, times for reflection should be incorpo-
rated into the activity, allowing for reflection which both pre-
cedes and follows interaction. Interaction is valuable because
one student’s hypothesizing question may direct another student
to reflect over something which s/he has not considered. Thus
progress is interpersonally incremental through indirect inter-
action, since each student must reflect on the “other-student”
hypothesis and put it in the intrapersonal pattern that her/his
mind is developing.
4. Reaching a point of eureka. Sometimes quickly, sometimes
slowly, the door-opening discovery is made, bringing the task to
its completion. We think it preferable after discovery, even in
task-oriented activities, to stress not just the product, but also the
process; thus we ask students questions about the bases of their
hypotheses and even compliment a student on the logic behind a
hypothesis that turned out to be false.
Process-Oriented Activities
Process-oriented activities contrast with task-oriented activities
by stressing that the value of the activity lies in the proceeding, not
in the end. During each stage of the process, students should
experience an indigenous, distinctive sense of accomplishment, and
at the end of the process-oriented activity, the sum of these
achievements should be equally distinct and greater than that
experienced at any one stage. In a second way they are different
from task-oriented activities: Process-oriented activities are open-
ended. They close inconclusively by suggesting that (a) not every
problem has a solution, and/or (b) it is not necessary to come to a
common agreement about a solution, thus avoiding what Ellis
(1990) finds in some interactive classrooms where students simply
“go through the motion of agreeing so that they can display
solidarity” (p. 116), and/or (c) each student’s individual solution has
a validity in itself arising from her/his processing a personally
satisfying answer.
To illustrate the distinctiveness of a process-oriented activity, we
will begin by analyzing an ESL activity suggested by Francine
20 TESOL QUARTERLY
2. Analytical stage. This second stage involves more analysis than
the first and brings into play inductive as well as deductive
reasoning. In the fable activity, students are encouraged to see
the similarities and differences in their stories. Noting that in
some of their stories animals behave like people, and that some
stories present “messages,” students can work out a definition of
fables based on their personal experience.
Copies of a fable from which the ending has been excised are
then distributed. If students have understood the definition of a
fable, they will quickly note that the “fable” given them is
incomplete. Students will generally enjoy developing their own
endings, each student developing several morals.
In this stage, students have gained a metacognitive awareness
of what is involved in framing a definition; they have used such
analytical faculties as comparing and contrasting, sorting
information, discarding information, and generalizing.
3. Evaluative stage. The aim of reflective thinking is not just ana-
lytical: It is also evaluative. Through evaluation, a person will
find errors or weak points, and through the elimination of such
false hypotheses or misdirected analysis, s/he will get to
what s/he considers to be the essential. The purpose of this stage
is for students to evaluate their output.
In the evaluative stage of the fable activity, students, working
alone, first eliminate all but one of their endings.
After each student has decided on one “best answer,” students
work in small groups where several individual answers are
reduced to one group consensus. Unlike the teacher of the Ann
Landers’ activity, we do not provide an authoritative answer.
This may seem to be an anticlimactic option, but our students
know our style of teaching and probably anticipated our doing
something like this.
We compliment the students on what they have accomplished,
noting that there are not always authoritative answers to
everything, but there is always the search, and they have
demonstrated that they know how to search.
Synthesis-Oriented Activities
In his critique of the notional syllabus, Widdowson (1979) faults it
for an artificial modularization which does not allow for the
development of “an awareness of meaning potential.” A synthesis-
oriented activity will encourage each student to realize a “meaning
potential” which is hers/his alone. In such an activity, tasks are not
CONCLUSION
Rivers (1983) writes that some teachers “take their students by
routes that are circuitous, lead to deadends, backtrack, and make
the going rough and difficult, so that attention is on the going
instead of the destination, and students begin to feel that the journey
itself is the most important thing, completely losing sight of the
goal.” She prefers a class where “students never allow themselves to
22 TESOL QUARTERLY
become absorbed in any activity on the way as an end in itself”
(p. 55).
Our preference is different. We like circumlocutions where the
reflective student circles a problem like a hawk spiraling above its
prey. We find, and think our students find, a fascination in the
“rough and difficult.” We like backtracking, for is not that a
definition of reflection? We have to like the “going” because our
students might spot the “destination” we have presumptuously set
without consulting them and, equally presumptuously, might
decide to sidetrack us out of playful spite. And hooray for those
students who “begin to feel that the journey itself is the most
important thing.” Does not almost every attempt at reflection have
“deadends,” inevitable and we feel valuable for ESL/EFL
students?
To summarize, we have tried to show that many activities in
CLT, in an attempt to correct some deficiencies of audiolingualism,
show a reliance on two sources of knowledge, phenomenalism and
intuition, at the expense of the third, reflection. While some CLT
writers have acknowledged the importance of developing and
promoting reflective thinking among ESL/EFL students, the major
types of activities in the CLT spontaneous-response, conspicuous-
action classroom flow from conceptions which do not encourage
reflection:
1. Phenomenalistically based activities which suggest that sensa are
crucial to language acquisition
2. lmmediate-response activities which measure if subconscious,
automatic, intuitive acquisition has occurred
3. Interfactional activities which stress that language is acquired
through an interpersonal negotiation, not through the intraper-
sonal negotiation where the mind reflectively “turns inward
upon itself”
The point of our paper is not to deny the value of phenomenalis-
tic, intuitive, interfactional activities, but to suggest that a
consideration of reflection can complement them. Particularly we
have addressed the following central assumptions of CLT:
1. The type of input. Certainly for language acquisition to be
successful, input must be comprehensible and relevant or
interesting. However, we believe that many CLT activities
assume that these criteria must be met at the same time and in the
same way. Comprehensibility must be realized immediately or
almost immediately or the student is “lost.” However, relevance
or interest, typically gauged in the CLT classroom through
24 TESOL QUARTERLY
THE AUTHORS
William L. Tarvin has taught at King Saud University-Abha in Saudi Arabia for the
last 12 years, during 8 of which he has served as Chair of its Department of English.
His recent articles on literature, EFL methodology, and education have appeared
in Journal of Reading, Modern Language Quarterly, The McGill Journal of
Education, International Review of Education, and The Journal of Irish Literature.
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Celce-Murcia, M. (1979). Language teaching aids. In M. Celce-Murcia &
L. McIntosh (Eds.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language
(pp. 307-315). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Clapp, J. G. (1973). John Locke. In P. Edwards (Ed.), The encyclopedia of
philosophy (Vol. 4, pp. 487-503). New York: Macmillan.
Curran, C. A. (1972). Counselling-learning: A whole-person model for
education. New York: Grune & Stratton.
Ellis, R. (1990). Instructed second language acquisition. Oxford; Basil
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Ellis, R. (1986). Understanding second language acquisition. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
26 TESOL QUARTERLY
Underhill, A. (1989). Process in humanistic education. ELT Journal, 43 (4),
250-260.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher
psychological processes (M. Cole, S. Scribner, V. John-Steiner, & E.
Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wenden, A., & Rubin, J. (1987). Learner strategies in language learning.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Widdowson, H. G. (1979). Explorations in applied linguistics. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
29
In their extensive review of the literature in language teacher
education, Bernhardt and Hammadou (1987) found a dearth of
empirical studies, particularly in the area of curriculum. They
specifically identified a critical need for research on the curriculum
of the methods course, as well as a need for, language education
programs to make connections with the larger field of education.
The Holmes Group (1986), a consortium of deans of colleges of
education across the United States, cited inadequate professional
preparation as one of seven major problems in teacher education
today. The Carnegie Forum report (1986) on teaching as a
profession found that too many teacher education programs
“produce graduates who complain that their education courses
failed to prepare them for teaching” (p. 71).
The purpose of this study is to examine the inner workings of the
TESOL methods course to the extent possible through analysis of
course syllabi and self-reporting questionnaires. This study
examines the content, goals, requirements, and instructional
materials of the TESOL methods course at 94 teacher preparation
programs in the United States.
The National Center for Research on Teacher Education
(NCTRE) identifies two kinds of qualities that need to be
addressed in any examination of courses in the teacher education
curriculum: academic quality and professional quality (Zeichner,
1988). The academic quality of a course encompasses the
intellectual rigor of the content and learning tasks, the degree of
challenge and opportunity for intellectual growth afforded students
in the course. Professional quality entails how the content of a
course relates to teaching and the extent to which students feel that
the course has helped them to become better teachers.
No empirical study to date has been published on the status of the
second language methods course although Richards and Crookes’
(1988) survey of the TESOL practicum provides a useful analysis of
a related course that is found in many TESOL teacher preparation
programs.
The professional organizations TESOL and ACTFL (American
Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) have each
established guidelines for the preparation of language teachers.
Additionally TESOL offers a Statement of Core Standards for Lan-
guage and Professional Preparation Programs (1985). However, the
ACTFL Provisional Program Guidelines for Foreign Language
Teacher Education (1988), currently in revision, are more specific,
complete, and up-to-date than the TESOL Guidelines for the
Certification and Preparation of Teachers of English to Speakers of
Other Languages in the United States (1976).
30 TESOL QUARTERLY
METHODOLOGY
The study reported here examined 77 questionnaires and 55
course syllabi returned from 94 institutions. To collect the
information, the author sent a cover letter requesting course syllabi
and related materials along with a one-page, two-sided question-
naire to the directors of 120 ESOL teacher preparation programs
listed in the Directory of Professional Preparation Programs in
TESOL in the United States 1986-1988 (Frank-McNeil, 1986). The
first mailing in January 1989 yielded 73 responses; the second
mailing in April 1989 drew 20 additional responses. Total response
rate was 78% (94) responses. (Three null responses were received
and four responses came from individuals at two institutions. Six
respondents sent syllabi for two methods courses.) Appendix A
reproduces the survey questionnaire.
This study does not attempt to analyze the role of the methods
course within the context of programs for the master’s degree in
TESOL or linguistics. In some programs, the methods course is an
integral and integrated part of the whole curriculum for the master’s
degree, rather than a single course or set of courses. Empirical data
concerning the relationship of the methods course(s) to the rest of
the curriculum in the TESOL teacher education program is needed.
At present, the best source of information about this area is the
Directory of Professional Preparation Programs in TESOL in the
United States 1989-1991 (Kornblum, 1989).
Course Goals
The goal statements, whether set apart or within the course
description, define educational areas of importance for the learner
in terms of content, learning process, and outcomes. Essentially the
goals comprise an educational blueprint for the course. If course
Content/Sequence
The content of the 55 syllabi is examined in Table 1 in terms of (a)
the number of institutions that treat the same topic and (b) the
number of weeks spent on the topic. The data show that methods
courses concentrate primarily on three areas: (a) innovative and
traditional methods, (b) the theory of second language learning, and
(c) approaches to teaching the four language skills. Specific
methodologies receive the greatest amount of attention and time in
the methods courses; some instructors spend weeks on individual
methods such as the Silent Way and Suggestopedia.
The second most popular topic is the theory of second language
learning, while writing, reading, and speaking are virtually tied for
third place in terms of the coverage they receive. These are
followed by the history of methods, the communicative approach,
grammar, listening, and testing.
The information gleaned from the 77 questionnaires related to
content confirms the data collected from the course syllabi.
Respondents were asked to estimate the percent of course time that
they spent on certain areas. Both the syllabi and the questionnaires
reveal that the history and overview of methods receives con-
siderable attention in the methods course, followed closely by the
teaching of the four language skills.
In large part, the sequence of content in the methods course can
be summarized as follows:
1. Theoretical bases of language teaching and learning
2. General history of second language pedagogy
32 TESOL QUARTERLY
FIGURE 1
Sample Course Goals
34 TESOL QUARTERLY
Course Requirements
Course requirements indirectly provide information about which
knowledge, skills, attitudes, and awareness the methods instructor
considers important and how s/he plans to develop them. Only one
syllabus focused specifically on the development of all four areas.
The wide variety of learning tasks and activities required by many
instructors is the most remarkable aspect of the course require-
ments. Clearly visible is a strong orientation toward classroom
practice and reflective teaching in the many examples of tutoring,
observation, and journal assignments.
One of the more interesting trends in the design of course
requirements is the provision of choice, where students may select
an assignment from several options in an effort to vary the
requirements to reflect the level of teaching experience of the
students and to allow for personal choice (and learning style). For
example, in one course the final project may be one of three
activities: (a) a take-home exam covering the entire course, (b)
preparation and demonstration of an oral skills lesson, or (c) a
research paper on a topic of personal interest, 15–20 pages in length.
Another program permits a student to either plan and teach a 10-
minute language lesson and develop four follow-up activities, or to
tutor high school or adult ESL students twice a week. Many other
examples of options in requirements occur throughout the syllabi.
The requirements are grouped into 10 categories below, with
frequency of occurrence in parentheses.
Exams (35). In terms of frequency of requirement and weight,
exams are the most important requirement in the majority of
methods courses. Not only do more instructors require exams than
any other activity, exams are counted more heavily. The format of
the final exam varies from a take-home exam on the entire course or
on reading and lecture material, to an in-class final on facts,
classroom problem-solving, and situational analysis, to an optional
in-class final that consists of a short personal position paper.
Papers (27). The variety of paper assignments is extensive. One
course assigns a reaction paper where students must synthesize
reactions to a particular topic or theme based on specific references
to classroom observations, tutoring/teaching, course readings, and
lectures. The research paper in another course calls for original
research or new approaches to solving a problem. Other formats for
a paper include an annotated bibliography on a topic of interest
related to ESL teaching; a four-page analysis of a thesis, qualifying
paper, or dissertation; or a reflective report or a teaching journal
recording thoughts and feelings about the teaching/learning
experience.
36 TESOL QUARTERLY
each class begins with a student-led warm-up activity. Students in
another must demonstrate an innovative teaching approach in small
groups, and give two peer-teaching demonstrations in grammar and
pronunciation. Elsewhere students have the option of conducting a
15- to 20-minute lesson with intermediate ESL students while being
observed. At its best, the teaching demonstration provides valuable
opportunities for reflection on teaching style, classroom manage-
ment, self-analysis, feedback on performance, and exploration of
alternative approaches.
A number of respondents felt that this practical teaching
component was more appropriate for the practicum, since they
view the methods course as a forum for teaching the theoretical
perspectives of innovative methods and approaches to teaching the
four language skills. However, for others the methods course is the
right (and in some programs, the only) place to put new ideas, skills,
and attitudes into practice.
Classroom observation (21). Assignments involving classroom
observation and analysis reveal an emphasis on practice. At its best,
observation is used to develop problem-solving skills, awareness,
and reflective teaching. A full discussion of observational tech-
niques and instruments appears in Day (1990). The number of ob-
servations required varies (with frequency indicated in paren-
theses): 1-4 classes (12); 4-6 classes (8); and 8-10 classes (4). Most
instructors require the completion of a written report or checklist
about the observation. One course asks students to visit and
evaluate in writing at least three ESL classes taught by student
colleagues. Another has solved the time-consuming problem of
scheduling observations by providing students with a list of ap-
proved schools and giving them the responsibility for making the
arrangements for observations.
Viewing videotapes sometimes substitutes for in-person observa-
tion. Indiana University of Pennsylvania has completed three
modules of a teacher assessment project for teachers-in-training that
uses videotapes illustrating specific teaching behaviors (Gerlach &
Millward, 1989). Vanderbilt University has developed a series of
learning experiences for cognitive discrimination training and the
development of decision-making skills using videotapes, computer
simulations, and videodiscs. The materials focus on problems
encountered by student teachers in their practice teaching
experiences (Skeel, 1989).
Tutoring/teacbing (17). Tutoring/teaching requires students to
work directly with ESL students—precisely what they will do as
professionals. A number of respondents indicated a need and desire
Required Materials
Texts. An analysis of the content of the course syllabi reveals
striking similarities between course content and the content of the
10 most frequently required texts (see Figure 2). Evidently the texts
either reflect the knowledge base for the subject or establish it.
Three of the top eight texts deal almost exclusively with specific
38 TESOL QUARTERLY
FIGURE 2
Required Readings
(No. of institutions that require the material are in parentheses)
Evaluation/grading criteria
About two thirds of the respondents (32) included partial or
complete information on how the course grades were derived.
Models varied widely, but some illustrative samples are provided in
Table 2. In general, the most frequently assigned and heavily
weighted assignments are exams and papers. A number of syllabi
either lacked grading criteria entirely, or had incomplete, unclear,
or incorrect scoring information (on several, the separate com-
ponents of the grade did not add up to 100%).
CONCLUSIONS
Respondents identified five areas for improvement of the methods
course:
1. More observations of skilled teachers (34%)
2. More videotaping of students for feedback (31%)
3. Greater emphasis on solving classroom problems (29%)
40 TESOL QUARTERLY
TABLE 2
Selected Evaluation Systems
42 TESOL QUARTERLY
teachers do not perceive their limitations as teachers, or sense the
possibility of problems. Kolb and Boyatzis (1979) assert that “most
forms of psychotherapy attempt to increase the patients’ awareness
of the forces affecting his [sic] behavior with the implicit
assumption that this insight will change the patient’s behavior” (p.
519).
Walz (1989) also underscores the importance of awareness in lan-
guage teacher education programs and recommends that language
teacher educators work to develop student recognition of what
constitutes communicative language teaching in order to enable
teachers to distinguish between mechanical and communicative
activities.
A fourth key issue for the methods course of the new decade is
reflective teaching. Maley (1989) advocates the use of reflective
teaching in teacher development programs, as does Freeman
(1989), who views the teacher educator as a collaborator with
teachers-in-training who starts them on the process of reflection.
(For a further discussion of reflection, see the article by Tarvin and
Al-Arishi in this issue of the TESOL Quarterly.) Coupled with
reflective teaching, enhanced and extended clinical experiences are
highly recommended by the Carnegie (1986) and Holmes (1986)
reports for the improvement of teacher education programs. The
utility of teaching journals for the development of reflective
teaching is indicated in the results of this survey and described by
Brinton and Holten (1989), who discuss the use of the teaching
journal entries of novice teachers at the University of California,
Los Angeles.
From this study of the TESOL methods course, gaps become
evident. The analysis of course goals reveals a striking lack of
emphasis on either classroom-based research or the use of
technology in the classroom. On the other hand, one could argue
that excessive attention is devoted to coverage of individual
methods that are rarely used, such as the Silent Way and
Suggestopedia. In the majority of programs (and textbooks), the
four language skills are still covered separately instead of with an
emphasis on how to promote the integration of skills in the
classroom. An absence of readings from (and training within) the
broader field of education tends to marginalize our profession and
narrow our viewpoint. We need to promote knowledge of and
integration into the educational mainstream. Minimally, the TESOL
methods course would do well to include work by such thinkers as
Bruner (1960, 1971), Dewey (1910, 1916, 1960), Gardner (1983,
1985), Knowles (1960, 1984), Kolb (1984), and Vygotsky (1987).
Other trends in the TESOL methods course are extremely
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Preliminary results of this study were presented at the 23rd Annual TESOL
Convention in San Antonio, March 1989. I am grateful to many people for their
assistance. In particular I thank my generous colleagues who shared their syllabi
and completed the survey; David Benseler who suggested the methodology; Sarah
Hudelson, Carole Urzúa, and Ann Raimes who gave encouragement and support;
Helen Kornblum who kindly supplied the mailing labels; Pegi Langan and Betsy
Coe-Bjorsell who helped with the data compilation; and Ann Barnacle and the
others who read and commented on the manuscript. Finally I am appreciative of
the substantive contributions of Sandra Silberstein.
44 TESOL QUARTERLY
THE AUTHOR
Christine Uber Grosse is Assistant Professor and Director of the TESOL and
Modern Language Education Programs at Florida International University in
Miami. Among her research interests are languages for specific purposes and
second language pedagogy. Her articles have appeared in the Modern Language
Journal, Hispania, and the ESP Journal.
REFERENCES
ACTFL. (1988). ACTFL provisional program guidelines for foreign lan-
guage teacher education. (1988). Foreign Language Annals, 21, 71-82.
Bailey, K. M. (1990). The use of diary studies in teacher education
programs. In J. C. Richards & D. Nunan (Eds.), Second language
teacher education (pp. 215-226). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bartlett, L. (1990). Teacher development through reflective teaching. In
J. C. Richards & D. Nunan (Eds.), Second language teacher education
(pp. 202-214). Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
Bernhardt, E., & Hammadou, J. (1987). A decade of research in foreign
language teacher education. Modern Language Journal, 71, 289-299.
Blair, R. W. (Ed.). (1982). Innovative approaches to language teaching.
Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Brinton, D., & Holten, C. (1989). What novice teachers focus on: The
practicum in TESL. TESOL Quarterly, 23 (2), 343-350.
Bruner, J. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Bruner, J. (1971). The relevance of education. New York: Norton.
Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy. (1986). A nation
prepared: Teachers for the 21st century. The report of the Task Force on
Teaching as a Profession. New York: Author.
Carrell, P. L. (1989). Metacognitive awareness and second language
reading. Modern Language ]ournal, 73, 121-134.
Clarke, M. A., & Silberstein, S. (1988). Problems, prescriptions, and par-
adoxes in second language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 22 (4), 685-700.
Day, R. R. (1990). Teacher observation in second language teacher
education. In J. C. Richards & D. Nunan (Eds.), Second language
teacher education (pp. 43-61). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.
Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. Boston: D. C. Heath.
Dewey, J. (1960). The quest for certainty. New York: Capricorn. (Original
work published 1929)
Ervin, G., & Muyskens, J. (1982). On training TAs: Do we know what they
want and need? Foreign Language Annals, 15, 335-344.
Frank-McNeil, J. (Ed.). (1986). Directory of professional preparation
programs in TESOL in the United States, 1986-1988. Washington, DC:
TESOL.
46 TESOL QUARTERLY
Pennycook, A. (1989). The concept of method, interested knowledge, and
the politics of language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 23 (4), 589-618.
Porter, P. A., Goldstein, L. M., Leatherman, J., & Conrad, S. (1990). An
ongoing dialogue: Learning logs for teacher preparation. In J. C.
Richards & D. Nunan (Eds.), Second language teacher education
(pp. 227-240). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Richards, J. C., & Crookes, G. (1988). The practicum in TESOL. TESOL
Quarterly, 22 (l), 9-27.
Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (1986). Approaches and methods in lan-
guage teaching: A description and analysis. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Skeel, D. J. (1989). Using technology to build teacher decision-making
skills. Foreign Language Annals, 22, 149-155.
TESOL. (1976). Guidelines for the certification and preparation of
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages in the United
States. Washington, DC: Author.
TESOL. (1985). Statement of core standards for language and professional
preparation programs. Washington, DC: Author.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Collected works of L. S. Vygotsky (R. W. Rieber
& A. S. Carton, Eds.; N. Minick, Trans.). New York: Plenum Press.
Walz, J. (1989). Context and contextualized language practice in foreign
language teaching. Modern Language Journal, 73, 160-168.
Zeichner, K. M. (1988). Understanding the character and quality of the
academic and professional components of teacher education (Research
Report No. 88-1). East Lansing: Michigan State University, National
Center for Research on Teacher Education.
Zimmer-Loew, H. (1988, October). Professionalizing the profession.
Plenary address delivered at the 1988 Florida Foreign Language
Association Convention, Tampa, FL.
APPENDIX A
The TESOL Methods Course Questionnaire
Your response to this questionnaire will contribute to a national survey of the TESOL
methods course. Thank you for your cooperation. Please check all appropriate responses.
1. Does your TESOL program offer a course in Methods of Teaching English as a Second
Language? Yes _ N o
What is the title of the course?
2. At your institution is the TESOL methods course
required for the MS in TESOL degree
required for state teacher certification in ESL
an elective for the MS in TESOL degree
other (please specify)
3. How many sections of the methods course do you offer each year?
4. What is the average enrollment per course?
5. Who teaches the TESOL methods course at your institution?
— full-time faculty member — adjunct professor
51
are a few examples of the many classroom procedures that embrace
elements of both. For the purposes of the present discussion,
speaking and listening can be defined as major skill areas of
interpersonal communication; pronunciation encompasses subsets
of both speaking and listening skill development. Due to the high
degree of overlap among these areas, a fundamental premise
underlying this article is that attention to speaking, listening, and
pronunciation must proceed in an integrated fashion. The areas are,
however, addressed separately in order to highlight some crucial
differences. Each section begins with an historical methodological
overview.
SPEAKING
The ability to speak coherently and intelligibly on a focused topic
is generally recognized as a necessary goal for ESL students.
Because many of them aspire to professional careers in English-
dominant communities, the coming decade will see increasing
pressure placed upon ESL high school, college, and university
graduates to possess excellent skills in both speech and writing. ESL
teachers of oral communication commonly turn to widely accepted
L2 teaching methods and materials. For those unfamiliar with this
area of the literature, Richards and Rogers (1986) present a useful
framework for the systematic description and comparison of L2
methods. See Pennycook (1989) and Prabhu (1990) for critiques of
the concept of method.
While examining L2 methods and approaches for the purposes of
curriculum design and lesson planning, teachers of ESL oral com-
munication need to keep at least two central considerations in mind.
First, the various methodologies most widely discussed in the
literature differ dramatically with respect to the role played by oral
language in the classroom. Speakers and listeners are expected to
interact with their peers, teachers, and other target language
speakers in qualitatively different manners within diverse L2
methods. Teachers will need to make principled decisions as they
review the literature, historical and current, on the following:
Grammar Translation (no attention is given to speaking or listening
activities at all); Total Physical Response (students rarely speak but
are challenged to physically demonstrate listening comprehension);
Audiolingualism (students repeat and orally manipulate language
forms); the Direct Method and Situational Language Teaching
(teachers do most of the talking while students engage in many
controlled, context-explicit, speaking activities); the Comprehen-
sion Approach (emphasizes listening and reading comprehension);
52 TESOL QUARTERLY
the Natural Approach (initially emphasizes listening comprehen-
sion, and later reading, while leaving room for guided speaking
activities); the Silent Way (teachers rarely speak, while student
speaking is focused upon grammatically sequenced language
forms); Suggestopedia (very controlled speaking activities which
are based upon lengthy written scripts and dramatic teacher
performances); Community Language Learning (many peer-to-
peer interactions that contribute to a community spirit among
students, whereas the spoken forms incorporated into the syllabus
are generated by students themselves); Communicative Language
Teaching (CLT) (many peer-to-peer, guided, and free speaking
activities which are organized around notional, functional, and/or
linguistic considerations; and a Task-Based Approach (activities are
centered upon practical tasks for students to perform that can be
weighted to emphasize oral communication).
A second consideration is that whereas the various methods and
approaches presented in the literature offer genuine alternatives for
teaching learners at early stages of L2 proficiency, several seem less
appropriate for intermediate or advanced levels of speaking
proficiency (e.g., Total Physical Response, the Silent Way, or
Suggestopedia). For example, Krashen and Terrell state explicitly
that the Natural Approach “is for beginners and is designed to help
them become intermediates” (quoted in Richards & Rogers, 1986,
p. 134). Some adaptations of any approach will be necessary to
meet the needs of particular groups of learners; moreover, these
methods are founded upon diverse theories of language and lan-
guage learning which individual teachers of ESL oral communica-
tion will need to evaluate for themselves.
Many student populations have significant spoken language
needs at the intermediate, advanced, and professional levels. For
example, ESL college students at many institutions are required to
complete a basic speech course in order to fulfill core curriculum
requirements. International teaching assistants need to develop
effective styles for lecturing to monolingual English-speaking
undergraduates. Those who major in business and marketing
commonly are expected to demonstrate mastery of public speaking
as part of the requirements of their academic departments. When
these students participate in ESL programs, specialized courses
need to be designed that focus upon requisite skills of oral commu-
nication.
Articles that address the teaching of speaking in ESL periodically
appear in the professional journals (e.g., Bassano & Christison, 1987;
Dubois, 1986; Gebhard, 1982; Maurice, 1983; Meloni & Thompson,
1980; Montgomery & Eisenstein, 1985; Murphy, in press; Richards,
54 TESOL QUARTERLY
the position that more proficient L2 speakers benefit from
generating and developing their own topics to present in class (Dale
& Wolf, 1988; Meloni & Thompson, 1980; Murphy, in press).
Students can develop their topics through classroom procedures
that are parallel to ones advocated in the teaching of the writing
process (see, for example, Mangelsdorf, 1989; Zamel, 1987). A
significant difference between an L2 writing course and this
component of an advanced level L2 oral communication course is
that in the case of the latter, a student’s topic culminates as an oral,
rather than as a written, presentation. Here, too, the delivery of a
student’s topic may be realized across a range of possible grouping
patterns. If working in dyads or small groups, individual students
can be provided with multiple opportunities for revising and
elaborating their presentations through a process of delivering the
same topic a number of times to different members of the class (for
further discussion, see Murphy, in press). If addressing the whole
class, a student has to cope with the kinds of affective pressures that
are likely to be encountered in content-area courses and in
nonclassroom settings. Teachers need to make decisions concerning
how to integrate these alternative structures for speaking activities
based upon knowledge of their students’ proficiency levels and
educational needs.
LISTENING
Listening instruction should play an important role in oral com-
munication curricula because high school and college students are
expected to enroll in lecture-centered courses during their earliest
experiences within mainstream classrooms. Lecture-centered
teaching in mainstream classrooms requires that ESL college
students function effectively as listeners from the very beginning of
their academic careers. Within most classroom settings, listening
serves as a primary channel for learning. Because little attention is
given to the students’ listening abilities in other academic
preparatory courses (Chamot, 1987), listening and connections
between listening, speaking, and pronunciation emerge as central
components of ESL oral communication.
The listening process currently is gaining attention as a major area
of interest in the literature on speech communication for native
speakers of English (Hunt & Cusella, 1983; Rubin & Roberts, 1987;
Stewart, 1983; Streff, 1984). Because it is a pervasive language
experience that operates in contexts ranging from simple
conversations to academic debates, the listening process merits
careful consideration. It has a primary role to play in the teaching of
56 TESOL QUARTERLY
to comprehend what they hear. Practice with recognizing and
making efficient use of these clues is one way to lay a firm
foundation for oral production activities. Because microlistening
includes the aural discrimination of sound patterns within streams
of speech, it is central to the teaching of accurate pronunciation.
Richards (1983) defines and discusses over 50 separate micro-
listening subskills that ESL learners need to master in order to
understand conversational as well as academic styles of discourse. 1
His work has been highly influential in this area (Powers, 1985).
Many teachers find Richards’ taxonomy especially useful since it
presents general guidelines for assessing students’ needs, formulat-
ing objectives, evaluating materials, designing classroom proce-
dures, and constructing listening tests (Dunkel, in press).
It is widely acknowledged that listeners use strategies for listening
(Mendelsohn, 1984; Wipf, 1984). At least two separate research
studies confirm that effective L2 listeners make better use of
inferencing, self-monitoring, and elaboration strategies than do less
effective L2 listeners (Murphy, 1987; O’Malley, Chamot, & Kupper,
1989). Expanding upon Lebauer’s (1984) recommendations for
classroom instruction, Murphy (1989) proposes a series of macro-
level strategic questions for L2 listeners to attend to while attending
to academic lectures (see Appendix). Practice in implementing
these questions is intended to help develop the metacognitive skills
of L2 listeners, which can be used in the classroom as a basis for
connections between listening and speaking activities.
Listening is thus a creative activity that can be analyzed and
described. Resources such as those mentioned above provide
teachers with necessary reference materials for designing L2
classroom listening activities. Rost’s (1991 ) and Ur’s (1990) teacher
reference texts are especially useful since they include not only
guidelines for designing listening activities but numerous lesson
plans targeted for L2 classroom instruction. An important theme
that the L1 and L2 literatures share in common is the mutually
interdependent relationship between the processes of speaking and
listening. In addition, increasing numbers of ESL methodologists
argue that L2 pronunciation practice needs to be intimately linked
with the listening process (Gilbert, 1984, 1987) and with genuinely
communicative speaking activities (Acton, 1984; Celce-Murcia,
1 Richards’ taxonomy is separated into (a) 33 microskills for conversational listening (e.g.,
discriminating distinctive sounds of the target language, recognizing the stress patterns of
words, recognizing the rhythmic structure of English, distinguishing word boundaries) and
(b) 18 microskills for listening to academic lectures (e.g., identifying the purpose and scope
of a lecture, identifying the role of discourse markers, recognizing key lexical items,
deducing meanings of unfamiliar words from context, detecting the attitude of a speaker
toward subject matter).
PRONUNCIATION
Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in the teaching of
pronunciation with adult second language learners, as evidenced by
numerous survey articles and research reports appearing in a
number of major publications (Avery& Erlich, 1987; Leather, 1983;
Morley, 1987; Pennington & Richards, 1986). Some common themes
are as follows:
1. Pronunciation needs to be approached from both macro- and
microlevel perspectives. Morley (1987) indicates the primary
role to be played by suprasegmentals (i.e., stress, rhythm, and
intonation) in the teaching of pronunciation; she places vowel
and consonant segmental in a secondary, supporting role. In
their discussion of “voice quality settings,” Esling & Wong (1983)
suggest that when learners are provided with opportunities to
practice a small number of physical positioning for the tongue,
throat, and mouth that are representative of U.S. and Canadian
English speakers (e.g., spread lips, open jaw, palatalized tongue
position, retroflex articulation, nasal voice, lowered larynx, and
creaky voice), then the pronunciation of individual vowel and
consonant sounds realized within these settings improves. Supra-
segmental sound patterns and broadly focused voice quality
settings are separate macrolevel components of pronunciation.
Attention to these components can complement and set the stage
for classroom activities that focus upon microlevel sound
segments.
2. Attaining better pronunciation habits is intimately linked with
learners’ affective states. Stevick (1978) wrote over a decade ago
that in the teaching of pronunciation,
all too often, self-consciousness leads to tension, tension leads to poor
performance, poor performance leads to frustration, frustration
leads to added tension, and so on around a downward spiral. (p. 146)
Teachers must be tactful when making decisions on how to
correct students’ errors and when to call students’ attention to the
nonstandard forms they produce. The embarrassment of
students is widely recognized as being counterproductive and
should be avoided as much as possible. Useful guidelines for
deciding when and how to correct students’ errors tactfully are
presented by Chaudron (1988, pp. 135-153), Hendrickson (1987),
58 TESOL QUARTERLY
Brown, H. D. (1987, pp. 192-195), Krashen (1982, pp. 116-119),
and Fanselow (1977).
3. Improvement in pronunciation depends upon significant com-
mitments of both time and energy from learners themselves.
Acton (1984) recommends that students commit themselves
contractually to specified amounts of practice on a weekly basis
if they are to overcome “fossilized” patterns. Improvement
cannot be expected to take place overnight. Students’ abilities to
make sense of phonological explanations and to gain control over
the forms practiced in class are slowly developing processes
(Parish, 1977). Phonological “backsliding” and affective resis-
tance to change, sometimes due to social pressures from native
language and/or peer group communities, are to be expected
(Beebe, 1988).
4. The cues of standard orthography coupled with consistent
references to phonological information facilitate the teaching of
both segmental and suprasegmental features of the sound
system. Dickerson (1985) discusses the many accessible spelling
patterns from which L2 speakers can learn to predict the pronun-
ciation of even unfamiliar words. In their treatment of blending
patterns across word boundaries (i.e., reduced forms), Hill and
Beebe (1980) devote special attention to the principle that
teachers make “maximal use of orthographic cues in the teaching
of pronunciation” (p. 322). For example, they propose that
teachers first introduce the concept of contractions, which are
represented within the regular orthographic system (e. g., it’s,
that’s, we’re, I’d), before moving on to the vast number of
blending patterns characteristic of conversational speech, which
60 TESOL QUARTERLY
Lawson, 1979; Fried-Booth, 1986), simulations (Crookall & Oxford,
1990), and other examples of person-to-person communicative
activities are of fundamental importance.
In the teaching of ESL, speaking, listening, and pronunciation
need to be placed within the broader context of oral communica-
tion. Although attention to one or more of these areas sometimes is
neglected in the classroom, ESL teachers can highlight all three
when they are designing course curricula and/or classroom ac-
tivities. To facilitate integration it is necessary to examine simultane-
ously the components of oral communication. Figure 1 is presented
as a reference guide for teachers. It presents classroom activities for
teaching oral communication arranged by proficiency level.
Fluency activities appear under the major-skill headings of speaking
and listening, and accuracy activities appear under the subskill
headings of oral production and aural discrimination. Production
activities are located on the left and attending activities are located
on the right. Activities within each of the figure’s four quadrants are
arranged according to proficiency level, from beginning to
advanced. Readers should note, however, the provisional nature of
such a hierarchy. Specific activities can be adapted by resourceful
teachers to fit the needs of students at different levels. However,
based upon proficiency-level descriptions in the ACTFL Guidelines
(ACTFL, 1982), Figure 1 is intended to present the activities on a
continuum from beginning to advanced levels of proficiency.
Practicing teachers should plan to examine the ACTFL Guidelines
(ACTFL. 1982) for themselves in order to rearrange these listings of
activities to fit their students’ needs.
Though by no means exhaustive, the activities listed in Figure 1
suggest an ambitious scope for integrated courses in oral communi-
cation. In the classroom, one soon realizes that the various foci
represented by each quadrant sometimes suggest competing
directions. It falls to the teacher to decide when to work on pronun-
ciation, when to work on broader skills of interpersonal communi-
cation, when to emphasize either speaking, listening, or pronuncia-
tion, and when to aim for varying degrees of integration. Well-
informed decisions are grounded in (a) familiarity with the related
literatures; (b) discussions of issues raised in the literature with
colleagues; (c) teacher experimentation with different instructional
options at the levels of approach, design, and procedure; and (d)
regular revision of the curriculum. These efforts eventually lead to
a necessary and pivotal tension that lies at the core of any course in
oral communication designed for speakers of English as a second
language. Teachers learn to coordinate many different concerns,
sometimes working on the sound system (i. e., phonological
N
c
Y
A
c
T
I
v
I
FIGURE 1 —Continued
Classroom Activities for Teaching Oral Communication
Arranged by Proficiency Level
contrasts, blending patterns, voice quality settings, rhythm patterns,
suprasegmentals), and at other times concentrating on more
conversational and communicatively more connected styles of
speaking and listening. In the context of second language
instruction, the various currents of oral communication can enrich
both teaching and learning experiences by providing alternative
focal points for classroom interactions. Classroom activities can be
structured, timed, and interrelated so the currents may run in
confluence rather than in opposing directions. This is where the
analytic and intuitive skills of teachers will come into play to
discover which activities are most appropriate at particular points in
time.
As noted above, the sound system/pronunciation component of
oral communication is currently receiving increased attention in the
literature on teaching second languages. This renewed interest re-
flects teachers’ continuing conviction that students must be provided
opportunities for increasing the linguistic accuracy of their speech.
However, fluency components of speaking and listening continue to
be the focus of ESL courses in oral communication. In fact, even a
brief review of commercially available texts designed for teaching
ESL oral communication demonstrates that activities centered
around speaking and listening are vastly more common in these
materials than are pronunciation activities. (For some recent
examples of ESL texts see Dale & Wolf, 1988; Echeverria, 1987; Glass
& Arcario, 1985; Kayfetz & Stice, 1987; Porter, Grant & Draper, 1985;
Rooks, 1987. For some examples of teacher training resource texts,
see Brown & Yule, 1983; Golebiowska, 1990; Klippel, 1987; Ladousse,
1987, 1989; Nolasco & Arthur, 1989; Pattison, 1987; and Wessels,
1987.) One of the more widely accepted and current approaches in
the teaching of second languages, Communicative Language
Teaching, is frequently criticized for overemphasizing the acquisition
of spoken fluency while neglecting to address adequately issues
related to gaining accurate control over phonology and syntax. One
critic (Marton, 1988) states:
The most obvious risk attached to the use of the communicative
teaching strategy is related to one of its fundamental principles, namely,
that it forbids direct correction of speech errors and makes the teacher
accept structurally erroneous utterances. . . . This principle is based on
the assumption that learners’ errors are caused by the processes of
hypothesis testing and as such are transient in nature, with the corollary
that they (i.e., speech errors) tend to disappear as the learner proceeds
along the developmental path, getting ever more (comprehensible)
input and constantly revising and correcting erroneous hypotheses.
(p. 49)
64 TESOL QUARTERLY
A similar criticism is frequently directed toward other L2 ap-
proaches such as the Natural Approach and Counseling Learning/
Community Language Learning. Advocates for these might take
issue with Marton’s critique by pointing out that each has diverse
applications and that some practitioners make successful attempts
to address the issue of spoken accuracy effectively. Clarke (1984) in
his discussion of what classroom practitioners owe to methodolog-
ical theorists (e.g., Widdowson, Savignon, Stevick, Lazonov, Terrell,
Krashen, or Curran) speaks to this issue when he points out that
it is the (individual, autonomous) teacher who is in the position of
authority, because only the teacher can decide what to take and what to
leave, whom to listen to and whom to ignore. (p. 591)
How then are methods and approaches adapted by individual
teachers concerned with phonological accuracy who are equally
committed to encouraging conversational fluency? The practice of
indirect error correction through the teacher’s systematic efforts to
orally paraphrase, reformulate, and expand upon students’ linguis-
tically nonstandard utterances in the target language is one tech-
nique frequently discussed in the literature (Brown, H. D., 1987;
Krashen & Terrell, 1983; Marton, 1988). When this “expansion”
technique is handled effectively, L2 learners have access to
phonological (as well as semantic and syntactic) conventions of the
target language. Such exposure may be a necessary, though not
necessarily sufficient, condition for learning to take place. As
teachers deliberately attend to students’ nonstandard language
forms, rephrasing these into linguistically accurate target language
patterns, students are presented with demonstrations of conven-
tional speech. Such demonstrations of reliable L2 patterns are
crucial sources of input for learners who are affectively prepared
for, and open and sensitive to increasing their acquisition of the
target language (for a related discussion, see Smith, 1982).
A very different alternative is explicit attention to phonological
analysis, through student practice with contextualized forms, and
integration of direct error correction into classroom activities.
Those concerned by the proscriptions of CLT advocates, might
appreciate the recommendations for methodological flexibility in
H. D. Brown’s (1977, 1987) recommendation that language teachers
practice cautious, reasoned, enlightened eclecticism when making
decisions that impact actual classroom practices.
There is ample support within the TESOL literature for class-
room activities that focus explicitly upon both micro- and macro-
level features of the English sound system, especially when working
66 TESOL QUARTERLY
pronunciation. They are not an example of, but rather an alternative
to, classroom activities that are relatively more communicative.
Since tracking is reminiscent of the roles of repetition and oral
pattern practice in the out-of-fashion Audiolingual Method, some
teachers might feel more comfortable if tracking is complemented
by the communicative instructional styles that Celce-Murcia, Pica,
and others describe.
Another practice that integrates the teaching of speaking,
listening, and pronunciation is training ESL learners to self-monitor
their private speech. Sometimes called “covert rehearsal”
(Dickerson, 1989, p. vi), this is a metacognitive learning strategy
encouraged by Morley (1988), Acton (1984), Yorio (1984), Stevick
(1980), and others. While best suited to the kind of student Krashen
(1982) has termed the “optimal Monitor user” (p. 19), it involves
critical self-evaluation and self-correction in either classroom or
nonclassroom settings. During moments of covert rehearsal a
learner applies to self-initiated utterances his/her knowledge of past
learning and memories of target language sounds. This ability is
vitally important for some students, especially for those who aspire
to improve the comprehensibility of their speech. As evidence that
strategies for covert rehearsal can be taught in the classroom,
Kenworthy (1987) introduces three practical classroom activities
that are designed to enhance this ability through the guided,
systematic, and focused analysis of audio recordings of students’
speech patterns. Teachers can experiment with these activities,
while exploring the classroom use of video, in addition to audio,
recordings as another means for integrating the teaching of
speaking, listening, and pronunciation.
CONCLUSION
The conceptual framework proposed here emphasizes that
focused attention upon a single component of oral communication
is insufficient. Pronunciation subskills, for example, are but slices of
a significantly larger pie. The same is true for the major skill areas
of speaking and listening. The potential for variety in classroom
activities increases as teachers experiment with integrating options
at the levels of curriculum design and lesson planning. The theory of
language that underlies this framework acknowledges that oral
communication is a composite of interconnecting language pro-
cesses. Attention to one area of oral communication ought to be
complemented by attention to others as systematically as is
possible. Each subset of oral communication needs to be incor-
porated within any informed curriculum design. By interweaving
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge Patricia A. Dunkel, Patricia Byrd, Joan Eisterhold
Carson, Chris Kamerschen, Tina Renn O’Kelley, and two anonymous TESOL
Quarterly reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
THE AUTHOR
John M. Murphy is Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics
and ESL at Georgia State University. His publications have appeared in English for
Specific Purposes, TESL Canada Journal, and the TESOL Newsletter. His current
focus is classroom centered research in programs of L2 teacher preparation.
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74 TESOL QUARTERLY
APPENDIX
Model for Listening Strategies Used in Academic Settings
Recalling & Summarizing
What is the general aim of this presentation?
What is the speaker saying right now?
Do I need to remember this?
Is this important enough to write down?
Have I read about this before? (Is it in my book?)
Speculating
Where is the speaker heading in a general sense? How do I know?
Can I relate any of this information to something I already know? Is it worth mentioning? Is
it worth writing down?
Do I know of an example that might help the speaker make the topic clearer to understmd?
What will the speaker probably be saying next? How do I know?
What is the point of this discussion?
Self-Examining
Could I summarize what the speaker is trying to explain?
Do I have any experience in this area?
Am I getting most of this? Do I understand it well?
Is there anything bothering me about this information?
Am I staying on target with the speaker’s topic, or am I drifting off and missing what the
speaker means to say?
Probing the Topic
Is this important information?
What are the key words being used?
Which of the concepts being presented are relatively more important?
Why isthe speaker saying’’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...”?
Do I see any connections between the ideas being presented?
How does this idea fit into the speaker’s overall plan?
How has this presentation been organized?
Interacting with Others
(While aiming to help the speaker make things clearer for myself and others)
Is this a convenient time for me to speak up in class by:
summarizing some of the content being explained?
asking a question?
providing a new and different example?
asking for help?
pointing out a relationship between ideas that some listeners may be missing?
Note. From “Listening in a Second Language: Hermeneutics and Inner Speech’ by J. M.
Murphy, 1989, TESL Canada Journal, 6, pp. 39-40. Copyright 1989 by TESL Canada
Journal. Reprinted by permission.
77
Another view considers texts to be the media through which
specific reading skills such as skimming or scanning are to be
mastered. This approach reflects a view that such skills are
themselves products which develop as separable units. Both
orientations may lead to strict analytic and discretely regimented
views of teaching and learning.
An approach to ESP reading which incorporates the learner’s
cognitive and intentional processes in the comprehension process
allows for more psycholinguistically motivated views of learning to
read. The present study presents an ESP project designed to
integrate the learner’s individual reading strategies and motivation
to learn content into the process of learning to read English for
science and technology (EST). The approach places instructional
emphasis on the process of comprehending the content of texts. In
this sense, importance is placed on the activity through which the
content is comprehended rather than on the specific language,
rhetorical patterns, or reading skills. The focus is the interaction of
the learner’s reading strategies with the tasks the learner performs.
EST is seen within the context of the reading process, and authentic
EST reading is viewed as involving the use of text to gain
information.
The context of the study is the Reading English for Science and
Technology (REST) Project in the Chemical Engineering
Department of the Universidad de Guadalajara (UdeG) in Mexico.
This is a joint project between the UdeG and the University of
California, Los Angeles, with additional support from the United
States Information Service and the Council for International
Exchange of Scholars. The project began in 1985 and has been the
basis for several studies and evaluations (see Hudson, 1989; Lynch,
1987; Lynch, 1990; Lynch & Hudson, 1991). The present report
focuses on the materials developed and instruction given during
1987-1989. The students in the program were in their third and
fourth years of a 5-year course leading to a degree in Chemical
Engineering. The students were “false beginners”: they had had 4 to
5 years of general EFL instruction in their preparatory and
secondary schools prior to enrolling in the university, and were
therefore not beginning the course without knowledge of English.
As in many of the reading EST courses which have been set up in
Mexican universities over the years (Alderson, 1980), the students
had no basic need to learn English other than to gain information
from journal articles, manuals, and textbooks in their university
studies and future employment.
Skills-based ESP reading projects in Mexico date from the early
1970s; Mexican universities have historically recognized the need
78 TESOL QUARTERLY
for reading-based English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and EST
preparation specific to the Mexican context (see Alderson, 1980;
Lynch, 1987, 1990; and Scott, 1981). The goal of this project, like
that of its predecessors, was to develop a reading EST program that
took into account the particular needs of Mexican students.
The discussion which follows addresses five areas related to the
present project and reading EST concerns in general: (a) theoretical
issues for reading EST programs and the bases for a content
comprehension approach are presented; (b) implications of the
approach for materials selection are discussed; (c) the process of
implementing the approach is detailed in an effort to provide those
involved in future programs with sample materials and specific
information regarding the development of such a program; (d)
implications of student performance throughout the course are
examined, including the types of reading and language ability
gained or lost in association with the instruction; and (e) the
implications of seeing EST instruction within the context of the
comprehension process, as shown in this project, are discussed.
Views of ESP
In order to understand the concerns of the approach presented
here, it may be useful to briefly summarize the features of other
80 TESOL QUARTERLY
should be exercised before uncritically accepting Hutchinson and
Waters’ arguments. They have articulated an important alternative
aesthetic of ESP curriculum issues, and in doing so they have raised
important concerns. However, no empirical evidence attests to the
superiority of their approach over others. Moreover, their critiques
may be overstated: It is doubtful that many skills-based approaches
would actually “discard” the learner. In most cases, programs and
materials develop over a long period of time and the process
includes several iterations in which student input is inevitable.
Consequently, we should be uneasy about rejecting a skills-based
approach solely on the basis of Hutchinson and Waters’ insights.
A more important criticism of the skills-centered approach is that
there are no definable unitary skills upon which to base an ap-
proach. “Skills” such as skimming, scanning, vocabulary, inferenc-
ing, vocabulary in context, or extracting the gist of a text are not uni-
tary. Lunzer, Waite, and Dolan (1979) failed to find evidence for
separable discrete reading skills through questions designed to mea-
sure eight different reading skills. Alderson and Lukmani (1989)
found that expert judges showed little agreement on the level diffi-
culty or skill specification of test items designed to tap specific
reading skills. Additionally, when those questions for which there
was agreement were administered to examinees, there was no rela-
tionship between item level (so-called higher order vs. lower order
skills) and item difficulty. Similarly, using the two-parameter item
response model, Hudson (1990) examined student performance on
tests of grammatical structures, reading skills, reading comprehen-
sion, and vocabulary. In that research no implicationally ordered
discrete skills were found. Indeed, there was considerable overlap
of skill difficulty across structures and skills, indicating a perform-
ance relationship between task, text, and language. Because it
focuses on “skills” sui generis, the skills-centered approach has as its
basis a set of heuristic constructs, which may be useful for language
teachers and curriculum developers, but are not necessarily psycho-
linguistically real.
The task for EST reading programs, then, is to incorporate the
concerns raised by learner-centered, skills-centered, and language-
based approaches without uncritically adopting the particular
constructs associated with these views. Each learner applies some
set of abilities to a language sample with varying degrees of interest,
purpose, and skill. This process, and the historical concerns of ESP,
are accounted for by an emphasis on the learner’s comprehension of
content. Additionally, a focus on comprehension emphasizes the
role of the reading process.
82 TESOL QUARTERLY
language acquirer identifies and masters unknown vocabulary,
grammar, and text structure. There is an apparent enigma regarding
just how this bootstrap comprehension can take place if the second
language learner is deficient in essential lexical, syntactic, and
discourse knowledge necessary for comprehending the content of
the text. Any reader faces an amazingly difficult task given that the
input which must be processed is complex from two perspectives:
(a) natural language is generally very complex linguistically; and (b)
the learner must utilize nonlinguistic knowledge systems to gain
information (Sharwood Smith, 1986). The L2 reader may be
deficient in application of both of these processes in the target
language. Reading involves the simultaneous application of
elements such as context and purpose along with knowledge of
grammar, content, vocabulary, discourse conventions, graphemic
knowledge, and metacognitive awareness in order to develop an
appropriate meaning. Application of these skills does not constitute
a linear processing strategy either from the bottom up (text to
reader) or the top down (reader to text), though readers may
restrict themselves to one level of processing (Faerch & Kasper,
1986). Rather, these skills, abilities, intentions, and strategies
represent a web of assets which are summoned to accomplish
the reader’s goal. They interact and compensate one another
(Stanovich, 1980).
It is precisely because of this compensating web of assets that a
focus on comprehension can allow learners to acquire unfamiliar
vocabulary and syntactic structures in their effort to understand.
The purposefulness of the activity can lead to vocabulary
acquisition (Pitts, White, & Krashen, 1989) and to grammatical
consciousness-raising (Rutherford, 1987). While interacting with the
text in order to gain information and reduce uncertainty, the learner
is motivated to attend to unknown and immediately essential
linguistic elements. The learner can learn those structures and
vocabulary to the extent necessary to apply them to the present
task. Further, the learner works from meaning to the structure
rather than from structure to meaning. This focus on meaning
encourages comprehension throughout the ability levels rather than
only at higher levels.
84 TESOL QUARTERLY
most appropriate form of input from which the reader develops
and expands those skills.
A second implication of the content comprehension approach to
EST indicated above is the need for a topic basis for readings. This
is certainly not exclusive to the approach adopted here. Many EST
as well as general English courses adopt this thematic orientation.
However, the thematic orientation of a content comprehension
approach to reading instruction consciously facilitates the reconcil-
iation of new with old information. A topic- or thematic-based cur-
riculum helps to create more semantically robust background
knowledge. The topical nature of material promotes the utilization
of the reader’s background knowledge in the comprehension pro-
cess. Part of that background knowledge is the knowledge that
when one reads in the real world, one reads materials on a given
topic and for a particular reason. Further, an individual in a
technical field often reads content on similar topics during any par-
ticular period of time. An educational approach that focuses on lan-
guage learning alone, ignoring the learning of subject matter, is gen-
erally inadequate to the needs of language learners (Mohan, 1986).
It is essential for students to see what they can and cannot do while
working with texts to gain content information,
A third implication is that the focus of instruction emerges from
the reading task. That is, the instruction directed to grammar,
vocabulary, and rhetorical structures arise from a need to process
the text and carry out the comprehension task (Silberstein, 1987).
Additionally, reading skills activities such as skimming, scanning,
reading for meaning, activating schemata, and applying metacogni-
tive strategies come from a task which requires that skill to be used
(Crookes, 1986; Long, 1985; Silberstein, 1987). The texts should be
selected for content rather than in order for students to practice a
particular structure or skill. Barnett (1988) has indicated that explicit
reading skill instruction may be ineffective; that is, there is little
evidence to indicate that isolated reading skill practice is any more
effective than isolated grammatical pattern practice in terms of
communicative performance. When the points of instruction are
derived from the reading tasks, instruction is more attentive to the
processes and strategies that the student must learn than to mastery
of separable language products such as a particular rhetorical style
or a particular grammatical structure.
FIGURE 1
REST Project Thematic Units
YEAR 1
1. General science/Physics and chemistry
2. The field of chemical engineering
3. Energy
4. Materials and properties
5. Environment: Technical issues and solutions
YEAR 2
6. Technology
7. Electronics
8. Computers
9. Equipment design
10. Physical and mechanical processes
86 TESOL QUARTERLY
FIGURE 2
Unit Criteria for Unit IV of Year 1 Text Selection
YEAR 1
Unit IV: Properties and Materials
Unit Criteria
The criteria for text selection cover the language content as well as
information regarding the language processing and learning of the
students. An example of how the text criteria for the different units
differ can be seen in the Article Content section of the two units
presented in Figures 2 and 3. In the first-year unit, the content is
general in nature in order to avoid focusing on one particular
property, whereas in the second-year unit the materials which are
called for are to be very specific. This particular distinction is based
on the types of content to be covered in the two different units as
much as it is based on the difference in reading proficiency between
the two years.
An example of the use of the materials selected on the basis of the
unit criteria from Figures 2 and 3 is provided in the unit sequence
charts in Figures 4 and 5.
Many of the suggested activities associated with the articles listed
YEAR 2
Unit IV: Equipment Design
Text Criteria
88 TESOL QUARTERLY
FIGURE 4
Unit Sequence Chart for Year 1, Unit IV
YEAR 1
Unit IV: Properties and Materials
Unit Sequence Chart
90 TESOL QUARTERLY
their studies. Grammar, rhetorical structure, and vocabulary treat-
ment emerged from the texts themselves. Finally, the purposes for
the activities emerged from the purposes that the students would
authentically have for these types of reading tasks.
RESULTS
The means and standard deviations for percent-correct scores on
the three forms of the test are presented in Table 1. The scores are
higher for the instructed group than for the uninstructed group on
each subtest of each test form. The reading comprehension subtests
92 TESOL QUARTERLY
TABLE 1
Means and Standard Deviations for Instructed and Uninstructed
Students on the Three Test Forms
have means higher than the other subtests for both the uninstructed
and instructed groups across all forms of the test.
The correlations among the subtests for each test are presented in
Table 2. In most cases, the grammar and multiple-choice cloze
subtests have the highest correlations. This is predictable as both of
these are primarily language-specific components whereas the
reading comprehension subtest scores will be affected by reading
strategy performance. In most cases, the reading comprehension
subtest has lower correlations with the other two subtests but does
not consistently correlate more highly with one than with the other.
In order to examine scores before and after instruction and the
interrelationships among the subtests, a repeated measures
multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) for each test is shown
in Table 3. Instructional status is the between-subjects factor; the
within-subjects factors are subtest and the subtest-by-status
interaction. Since the subjects did not take all three forms of the test,
it is not appropriate to examine status-by-test or subtest-by-test
interactions. On all three forms of the test, there is a significant
difference (p < .05) indicated for status (instructed vs. unin-
structed) and for subtest (grammar, comprehension, and cloze). On
Form 3, there is also a significant interaction for subtest by status.
In order to determine whether there remained a significant main
effect on the subtests for the instructional status, Scheffé post hoc
comparisons for differences between all possible pairs of means
were computed. These are shown in Table 4 and indicate that there
TABLE 3
Repeated Measures ANOVA Tables for Each Form of the Test
94 TESOL QUARTERLY
TABLE 4
Seheffé Comparison Mean Differences Between
Instructed and Uninstructed Examinees
Minimum
significant Difference
DISCUSSION
The primary concern in the evaluation of the effectiveness of the
REST Project was whether or not the students improved in their
EST reading ability. The secondary concern was whether the
students improved their grammar, vocabulary, and general reading
abilities. The results in Tables 3 and 4 show significant and
meaningful improvement by the students after instruction. The
students improved in all three skill areas measured by the tests. The
post hoc comparisons show this to be the case for all subtests on all
three forms of the test. Thus, a content comprehension approach in
which students were not presented a structurally based syllabus
helped students improve both their EST reading comprehension as
well as their grammar and general language reading ability. This is
additionally of interest, given that the instruction and materials
focused on EST reading rather than grammar or skills, when it is
recalled that the EST reading subtest correlated less well with the
grammar and cloze subtests than these two subtests did with one
another. Instruction in EST reading, then, is shown here to improve
other language skills not highly correlated.
Although there are significant differences associated with
instructional status, there are two anomalies in the results. The most
obvious is the interaction of subtest by status indicated in Form 3 of
the tests. This appears to be due to a lower improvement in cloze
scores than the relatively large gain in the scores on the grammar
and reading subtests. The reason for this low improvement, in
contrast with the other test forms, is not clear. The second anomaly
is the relatively low improvement in reading comprehension on
CONCLUSIONS
The REST Project curriculum presented in this study is based on
a concern for motivating students with relevant, authentic reading
materials as well as a concern for applying current reading theory to
foreign language reading instruction. This implies that students
receive instruction in language structure, listening, speaking, and
writing only as these serve to enforce the students’ ability to read
technical English. The goal of the project is for students to become
autonomous readers in the field of chemical engineering by the end
of their second year.
After instruction in the content comprehension approach, student
scores were significantly higher on the three reading subtests than
when they started the program. The implications of these findings
are not that other approaches to instruction and syllabus design are
either ineffective or logically flawed. Rather, the implications are
that a content comprehension approach to reading can be an
effective basis for a program to improve reading ability; at the same
time this approach does not impede the development of other
language components. Specifically, the approach exemplified here
was best for the REST Project because of the unique needs of the
students. Other such projects should consider the content
comprehension approach but should also examine various other
models and perhaps be eclectic in their application.
Finally, this study shows a need to address several types of
evaluation in ESP projects. Evaluation is an area sadly lacking in
most ESP, indeed in most EFL/ESL, work. Too often unsubstan-
tiated claims are made about what programs should look like or
should do. The present study represents a first step in the process of
validating a comprehension approach to EST instruction. There are
96 TESOL QUARTERLY
still several research areas to be pursued. First, the study should be
replicated in a non-Spanish-speaking context. Second, there should
be a more detailed examination of student reactions to this type of
instruction. Finally, research should be conducted to examine
whether the content comprehension approach works better or less
well than other approaches to EST.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A preliminary discussion of some of the data presented here appeared in the
University of Hawai’i Working Papers in ESL. The author would like to thank Shira
Smith, J. D. Brown, Graham Crookes and anonymous TESOL Quarterly reviewers
for comments and suggestions. Also, the author would like to thank the teachers
and students at the REST Project.
THE AUTHOR
Thom Hudson is Assistant Professor in the Department of English as a Second
Language at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His primary interests are language
testing, second language reading, ESP, and program evaluation. He has taught
ESL/EFL in the U. S., Egypt, and Mexico.
REFERENCES
Alderson, J. C. (1980). A process approach to reading at the University of
Mexico. ELT Documents: Special Issue. Projects in Materials Design,
134-143.
Alderson, J. C. (1990). Testing reading comprehension skills (part one).
Reading in a foreign language, 6, 425-438.
Alderson, J. C. (in press). Testing reading comprehension skills (part two):
Test-taker’s accounts. Reading in a foreign language.
Alderson, J. C., & Lukmani, Y. (1989). Cognition and reading: Cognitive
levels as embodied in test questions. Reading in a Foreign Language, 5,
253-270.
Barnett, M. A. (1988). Reading through context: How real and perceived
strategy use affects L2 comprehension. Modern Language Journal, 72,
150-162.
Brinton, D. M., Snow, M. A., & Wesche, M. B. (1989). Content-based
second language instruction. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Carrell, P. (1989). Metacognitive awareness and second language reading.
Modern Language ]ournal, 73, 121-134.
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Lynch, B. K., & Hudson, T. (1991). Reading EST. In M. Celce-Murcia
(Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (2nd ed.).
Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Mohan, B. A. (1986). Language and content. Reading, MA: Addison-
Wesley.
Munby, J. (1978). Communicative syllabus design. C a m b r i d g e :
Cambridge University Press.
Peretz, A. S. (1988). Student-centered learning through content-based
instruction: Use of oral report projects in the advanced EFL reading
class. Reading in a Foreign Language, 5, 181-191.
Phillips, M. K., & Shettlesworth, C. C. (1978). How to ARM your students:
A consideration of two approaches to providing materials for ESP. In
ELT Documents: No. 101. English for Specific Purposes, 23-35.
Pitts, M., White, H., & Krashen, S. (1989). Acquiring second language
vocabulary through reading: A replication of the Clockwork Orange
study using second language acquirers. Reading in a Foreign Language,
5, 271-276.
Rumelhart, D. E. (1977). Understanding and summarizing brief stories. In
D. LaBerge & S. J. Samuels (Eds.), Basic processes in reading:
Perception and comprehension (pp. 265-303). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Rumelhart, D. (1980). Schemata: The building blocks of language. In R. J.
Spiro, B. Brucej & W. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical issues on reading
comprehension (pp. 33-58). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Rumelhart, D. E., & Ortony, A. (1977). The representation of knowledge
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Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge (pp. 99-135). Hillsdale, NJ:
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Rutherford, W. E. (1987). Second language grammar: Learning and
teaching. London: Longman.
Scott, M. (1981). Reading comprehension in English for academic
purposes (EAP). [Occasional paper]. The ESPecialist, No. 3.
Sharwood Smith, M. (1986). Comprehension versus acquisition: Two ways
of processing input. Applied Linguistics, 7, 239-256.
Silberstein, S. (1987). Outtakes from Reader’s Choice: Issues in materials
development. TESL Canada Journal/Revue TESL Du Canada, 4, 82-92.
Smith, S. (1988, October). What am I going to teach? There’s no book!
Paper presented at the 1988 MEXTESOL Convention, Mexico City.
Stanovich, K. E. (1980). Toward an interactive-compensatory model of
individual differences in the development of reading fluency. Reading
Research Quarterly, 17, 157-159.
Swales, J. (1971). Writing scientific English. London: Nelson.
Swales, J. (1985). Episodes in ESP. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Swales, J. (1988). Communicative language teaching in ESP contexts.
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 8, 48-57.
Trimble, L. (1985). English for science and technology. C a m b r i d g e :
Cambridge University Press.
APPENDIX
Materials Developed for Year 2, Unit IV, Text 2
English - English
employ - use
restart – start again
shutdown – terminate operation
startup – begin operation
C) Paragraph Two
III. Vocabulary in Context: Find the following terms. Write their definitions in either
English or Spanish.
EXAMPLE: rnothballirtg (p. 74, CO1. 1) = “successfully shutting down for long periods
without deterioration.”
1. retubing (75/2)
2. rebundling (75/2)
3. retrofitting (75/2)
4. heat-location maps (77/1)
5. tube-plug map (77/1)
6. sleeving (79/1)
7. heat shield (85/2)
IV. Comprehension: Use the text to answer the following questions in Spanish. The items
are NOT in text order. The answers should be complete and contain ALL the important
details.
1. What is the procedure for mothballing if it is NOT safe to fill the exchanger with process
fluids?
2. In rebundling, what should be done if the shell and bundle have been changed and deviate
from the original plans?
TUBING RETROFITS
TESOL QUARTERLY
VII. Summary: Choose ONE of the following three topics and summarize the decisions
necessary for each topic.
A. retubing: The tube-to-tubesheet joints can be welded. However, the work will be
dangerous. There is no work outage scheduled but there could be. The unit cannot be
bypassed. A replacement bundle could be ordered but it will take 6-8 weeks and there are
only 5 weeks of inventory on hand. Summarize the rest of the decisions to be made before
retubing, replacing the bundle, or replacing the exchanger.
B. tube-end plugging: The unit has been in operation for 5 years. There is no hazard to
workers. The damage is in the first 2–3 rows near the inlet to the shell. The tube-side pressure
is higher than the shell-side pressure. What are the remaining decisions and procedures for
tube-end plugging?
C. full retubing: Summarize the difference in making a decision about whether to retube or
rebundle a large-removable bundle versus retubing or rebundling a fixed-tubesheet
exchanger.
105
Like all reading-writing activities, summarizing is an interactive,
recursive process. Sarig (in press) has documented this in her study
of the on-line protocols of a student writing L1 and L2 study
summaries. Like Sarig, we notice that in summarizing a text, we
work back and forth between the text, the paper we are writing,
and the requirements of the assignment—rereading, rewriting, and
continually reflecting on and comparing aspects of these elements.
Recursion is a complex cognitive operation that is linked to cogni-
tive development. In their studies of planning skills for summary
writing among students of different age groups, Brown, Day, and
Jones (1983) indicate that “the ability to work recursively on
information to render it as succinctly as possible requires judgment
and effort, knowledge, and strategies, and is, therefore, late
developing” (p. 968).
Thus, cognitive load is determined by a number of interacting
internal and external constraints. This paper provides an overview
of these constraints and their relation to summarizing instruction
and suggests pedagogical approaches to mediating cognitive load.
EXTERNAL CONSTRAINTS
Horowitz (1988) and Flower (1987, 1989) have stressed the
significance of the role external constraints play in determining
student success with assignments. These constraints include such
factors as the purpose and audience of the assignment, features of
the assignment itself, time constraints, the environment in which the
student must function, and the various conventions expected by the
discourse community.
Most summarizing in an academic setting is done either to fulfill
a professor’s assignment or as a study aid for oneself. Even in the
latter case, the professor constitutes the critical audience. In either
case, while there is the explicit purpose of reporting the gist of the
material or critiquing it, the implicit purpose is to demonstrate one’s
competence in the subject matter. Students need to consider the
professor’s professional experience, perspective, and personal
prejudice. Students must also be adequately familiar with academic
and discourse community conventions to be able to anticipate the
professor’s expectations, many of which may not be explicitly
elaborated in the assignment.
In every summary assignment there is a complex, dynamic
interaction between the features of the audience, the implicit and
explicit purposes, and the other operative constraints of the
assignment, such as required length, nature of the material to be
summarized, degree of synthesis necessary, number of sources to be
INTERNAL CONSTRAINTS
In designing assignments or materials for teaching summarizing,
we base decisions about external constraints on our assessment of
the students’ operative internal constraints. (It should be remem-
bered that, once determined, teachers’ expectations function as
external constraints on the student.) Those internal constraints
focused on here are: L2 proficiency, content schemata, affect,
formal schemata, cognitive skills, and metacognitive skills, Weak-
nesses in any of these areas can short-circuit student success.
L2 Proficiency
The L2 skills needed in summarizing include adequate reading
skills and comprehension level plus adequate control of grammar,
vocabulary, and writing skills to manipulate and express the
information. In our experience, limitations in any of these result in
semantic distortions, inability to paraphrase, and other problems.
As in other reading-writing tasks, adequate L2 skills seem
fundamental to successful summarizing, regardless of skills and
strategies the student may have in L1. This observation is supported
by Clarke’s (1980) and Carrell’s (1988) findings on the transfer of L1
reading skills to L2 reading, in which indications of a kind of ceiling
effect were found; i.e., students must attain a certain level of
proficiency in the second language before they can profit from L1
reading skills. Hence, students should not be expected to produce
formal, graded academic summaries until they have at least a high-
intermediate level of proficiency. Even then, it is important to
compensate for the proficiency level by carefully controlling the
external constraints.
Content Schemata
The vast amount of research conducted on the role of content
schemata in reading by Carrell (1987), Rumelhart (1980), Johnson
(1982), and others has demonstrated that students must have
appropriate content schemata available in order to be able to
Affect
Closely related to the area of content schemata is the affective
domain. Steffenson, Joag-dev, and Anderson (1979), and Markham
and Latham (1987) have demonstrated the significant role of cultural
factors and religion (which involve both content schemata and
affect) in reading comprehension. Unfortunately, little formal
research has been conducted on the role of affect per se in reading-
writing activities. Johns (1988) reported that one of the major
problems identified by professors she interviewed was international
students’ highly emotional responses to texts that offended their
cultural values. Since such an emotional response can prove debili-
tating in a summarizing context, Johns’ report highlights the impor-
tance of exercising care and sensitivity in selecting texts that students
must manipulate. Brand (1987) and McLeod (1987) also emphasize
the importance of affect in writing and urge further study.
Formal Schemata
Carrell (1984b) has described formal schemata as the abstract
knowledge structures that represent conventional organization of a
text, aiding the reader in comprehension and recall. We expand this
definition to include all formal expectations of a discourse
community. Applied to the U.S. academic discourse community,
the term would include expectations concerning elements such as
format, thought and rhetorical patterns, and the conventions of
paraphrasing, quotation, and documentation. Whereas the formal
schemata of the professor constitute external constraints, the formal
schemata available to the student are internal constraints.
In designing summary assignments, we suggest that instructors
select texts embodying patterns that are manageable for their
particular students. Carrell (1984a) claims that patterns exhibiting a
strong relationship such as cause-effect or comparison seem to be
easier than those exhibiting a weaker link, such as description.
Typically, instructors also train students in the special conventions
of summaries: the type of material appropriate in introductions,
how to acknowledge the source, when to quote, and how to
paraphrase.
Metacognitive Skills
Crucial to effective cognitive and critical thinking skills are the
conscious awareness and control we call metacognition. Figure 1,
based in part on an adaptation of Sarig’s conceptualization (in
press), roughly outlines our perception of the role of the metacog-
nitive skills of planning, assessment, and repair in the recursive
process of writing an informative summary. This model does not
attempt to represent the important interactions and simultaneity of
these activities documented in Sarig’s study.1
Expanding Sarig’s taxonomy (1988), “planning” can include goal
setting, strategy selection, and rudimentary ideational formulation.
Whereas these skills tend to be related to cognitive development,
Brown, Day, and Jones (1983) found that the presence of planning
activities was the best predictor of success for older elementary
students in producing efficient summaries of texts. Adult university
students should be able to utilize appropriate planning mechanisms
unless (a) they are not aware of these mechanisms, as may be the
case with students who have had little L1 writing experience, or (b)
they are performing so many complex linguistic and cognitive
activities simultaneously that the kinds of mature planning
mechanisms they would use if they were writing in L1 are short-
circuited.
In Figure 1, assessment involves (a) assessing the assignment,
evaluating the source and relating its form and content to one’s own
schemata, and (b) evaluating the summary in terms of its
relationship to the specific purpose of the assignment, the accuracy
of the condensed representation of the essential information in the
source, and lexical/grammatical correctness. Repair occurs at any
of the points in the summarizing process. A student can repair (a)
his/her understanding of the assignment, the text, the relationship
between the text and the assignment; and (b) the production of the
summary at any stage in the process and within any of the layers of
the activity. These metacognitive activities are clearly not tidy
linear endeavors.
As seen in Johns (1985) and Sarig (in press), so-called adept
writers perform these metacognitive functions automatically,
as part of their normal reading-to-writing strategy. It is the
1 Sarig’s
taxonomy of the processes of composing a study summary identifies planning,
operating, and assessing as major operations, classifying repair as one aspect of the
operating system.
TEACHING SUMMARIZING
As previously stated, when instructors teach summarizing skills, it
is important to control the external constraints based on our analysis
of the students’ internal constraints. Simultaneously, we must build
student skills in the areas that constitute internal constraints.
Although we typically do much of this balancing intuitively,
conscious consideration of these factors can improve our teaching
effectiveness. The discussion here is limited to informative sum-
maries.
Depending on their L2 proficiency and critical thinking skills,
students may need background training in isolated skills prior to
attempting formal summaries. If summary writing is taught at the
high-intermediate level or above, such activities can be used for
individual remediation.
An inductive approach may be helpful in teaching superordina-
tion. Teachers can list details and elicit relationships or generaliza-
tions orally. The same approach can be applied to short readings
with no explicit generalization and then to more complex readings
with multiple levels of meaning. These activities can begin orally
and progress to collaborative written exercises in which students
supply topic sentences and main idea sentences. Such activities
typically begin with concrete material and move to more abstract
content. As we work on superordination, modeling or dem-
onstrating our own thinking process aloud for students can be very
helpful in clarifying our expectations in terms of cognitive and
metacognitive operations.
THE AUTHORS
Margaret R. Kirkland is Assistant Professor of EFL at The George Washington
University, where she coordinates technical writing courses at the high-
intermediate and advanced levels. Her research interests relate to cognition in
reading-writing activities, composition, and discourse community cultures.
Mary Anne P. Saunders is Assistant Professor of EFL at The George Washington
University. She coordinates grammar/writing and research courses at the high-
intermediate level. Her professional interests include research in methodologies
and materials, in reading-writing instruction, and in learning-disabled nonnative
English speakers.
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Carrell, P. L. (1984b). Evidence of a formal schema in second language
comprehension. Language Learning, 34, 87-112.
Carrell, P. L. (1987). Content and formal schemata in ESL reading.
TESOL Quarterly, 21 (3), 461-481.
Carrell, P. L. (1988, March). Second language reading: Reading, language,
and metacognition. Paper presented at the 22nd Annual TESOL
Convention, Chicago, IL.
Clarke, M. A. (1980). The short-circuit hypothesis of ESL reading. Modern
Language Journal, 64, 203-209.
APPENDIX A
Introduction to Informative Summaries
The purpose of an informative summary is to report what someone else has said in a
concise form that is easy for your reader to understand. Summaries are often given as course
assignments. However, the skills you develop in learning to summarize can also be used in
other important situations: e.g., when you have to explain something you have read in class,
when you have to express what you have learned from lectures and tests on a test, when you
have to incorporate material in your research papers or reports,
FORMAT
Below are the points that need to be covered in your informative summaries. You do not,
however, always have to present these points in this order,
Main Point #1 and Main Point #2 represent the most important ideas/information in the
article, even though the author may not have presented them in this order. Sometimes it is
necessary to rearrange the information to clarify it in a condensed form.
BODY
SUMMARIZING PROCESS
1. Read the assignment and reflect on the expectations.
2. Read the material to be summarized and think about it.
Look for “the big picture.” What is the main idea; how do the points fit
together? Who is the author; why did he/she write this?
3. Make a visual diagram of the material.
Does it show how the main points are related?
4. Write your summary based on the diagram. (Do not refer to the article until you have a
rough draft.)
Refer to the guidelines and/or assignment whenever you need to.
5. Review your summary to be sure it is complete and clear. Does it represent the ideas
accurately?
Compare your summary with your diagram, then with the article.
6. Compare your summary with the assignment. (In this case, compare it with the guidelines
and checklist, too.)
Have you satisfied the expectations?
7. Revise and “polish” your summary.
Is it easy to read? Does it report the complete idea?
YES NO
1. Does your summary give “the big picture”? (Does it
emphasize the relationship between the main points?)
2. Have you clarified what the author says about each
point (rather than giving only the topic)?
3. IS it clew that your paper is a summary of someone else’s
material? (Have you mentioned the source at the
beginning, periodically throughout the summary, and in
a bibliographical heading or footnote?)
4. Have you expressed the ideas in your own words
(paraphrased)?
CONTENT SCHEMATA
& AFFECT
FORMAL SCHEMATA
COGNITIVE SKILLS
METACOGNITIVE
SKILLS
123
whole-heartedly embraced in many ESL writing classes, which
actually taught that English speakers think in a straight line while
Asians think in circles and others think in zigzags.
On the other hand, by turning their backs on contrastive rhetoric,
process-oriented researchers and writing teachers are logically
compelled to argue that L2 writing problems are, in fact, those of
any developing writer, a position that Mohan and Lo (1985) take
when they suggest that problems of Chinese students writing in
English do not result from the influence of Chinese rhetorical
patterns but are the usual difficulties of inexperienced writers.
Several objections to that position might reasonably be raised.
Those who ignore the insights of contrastive rhetoric imply that
students come to L2 writing without any previously learned
discourse schemata. Yet writing conventions are taught in schools.
While many children already can read when they start school and
many read outside school for entertainment, few can write when
they enter school and, except for letters and lists, few write outside
school. In other words, writing, for most school children, is nearly
always school sponsored and inevitably, therefore, reflects the
culture of the school system and reproduces culturally preferred
discourse styles. Furthermore, if we consider the age and level of
education of the many ESL graduate students studying in English-
speaking countries, it is difficult to take the position that these L2
writers are inexperienced in writing in L1.
Another difficulty with the anticontrastive rhetoric position is its
implication that L1 writing strategies are not transferred to L2
writing situations. While sufficient research does not exist to
establish firmly to what degree L1 writing strategies transfer to L2,
Jones and Tetroe (1987) conclude from a study of Spanish-speaking
writers writing in English and Spanish that transfer of higher level
planning skills in writing does occur, particularly with writers
beyond a certain threshold of proficiency in L2. Hall (1990) also
concludes that some revising strategies appear to function across
languages. The Carson, Carrell, Silberstein, Kroll, and Kuehn (1990)
study of both Chinese and Japanese students revealed a complex
pattern of interactions between L1 and L2 reading and writing
skills. If writing strategies do transfer across languages, presumably
ESL students might then employ strategies learned for specific L1
writing contexts to their L2 writing. The L1 strategies might differ
from those appropriate in, for example, English-medium universi-
ties, proving, therefore, to be ineffective in the new context.
It seems reasonable to assume that different cultures would ori-
ent their discourse in different ways. Even different discourse com-
munities within a single language, such as those constituted by
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Tony Silva and two anonymous TESOL Quarterly reviewers
for their careful readings and insightful comments.
THE AUTHOR
Ilona Leki is Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee. Her
publications include Academic Writing: Techniques and Tasks (St. Martin’s Press,
1989); Reading in the Composition Classroom: Second Language Perspectives
(Ed., with Joan Carson, Newbury House, in press); and Understanding ESL
Writers: A Guide for Teachers (Boynton-Cook, in press). She is coeditor (with
Tony Silva) of the forthcoming Journal of Second Language Writing.
■ Both of these books are about the “small victories” that are possible
for students who live their “lives on the boundary.” Rose narrates his
own experiences and those of the students he comes in contact with—
students who, like himself, have been marginalized because of class,
race, poverty, and difference. Freedman chronicles a year in the life
of a high school teacher, Jessica Siegel, her school community, and
her students—students who represent “all the confusion an immigrant
society can offer” (p. 31). In both cases these authors provide us with
rich, complex, and often painful accounts of how and why these
students came to be relegated to the borders of society and schooling,
facing not only economic and political barriers, but barriers posed by
the very schools they entered. As we come to understand the sources
for these students’ difficulties and frustrations, we also come to see
the students as Rose and Siegel do: as individuals with promise and
potential—this despite the fact that this vision is constantly
challenged and compromised by the larger contexts within which
these students live.
Rose’s volume (now available in paperback) begins with his
autobiographical account of growing up as a child of immigrants
who enters the world of school and comes to understand firsthand
what it means to be labelled underprepared, to feel disoriented and
alienated. The story of his own “journey from the high school
vocational track up through the latticework of the American
145
University” (p. 8) is interwoven with his reflections about the range
of students he comes to teach—for example, children from
impoverished neighborhoods who were identified as the school’s
poorest readers, college students who were designated as
“remedial” and mystified by the academic work they were
assigned, and adults in a literacy program who represented
“America’s underclass,” who “got lost in our schools” (p. 215). It is
through these individual cases, recollected in rich detail, that Rose
makes the argument that schools, with their reductive assumptions
about language and literacy and their mechanistic approaches to
curriculum, make it difficult if not impossible for these students to
experience success:
There ended up being little room in such a curriculum . . . to explore the
real stuff of literacy: conveying something meaningful, communicating
information, creating narratives, shaping what we see and feel and
believe into written language. . . . The curriculum I saw drained the life
out of all this, reduced literacy to the dry dismembering of language—
not alive, not communicative at all. . . . It seemed to me that such a
curriculum was especially troublesome for children like the ones in my
class: children who had not been prepped in their homes to look at
language in this dissected, unnatural way; children for whom English
was a foreign language; children of particularly mobile families who fell
out of the curricular lockstep demanded by this approach to language;
. . . children who, like me long ago, just didn’t see the sense in such
analysis, and, before long, were missing it, not getting it and falling
behind. (pp. 109-110)
This argument runs through Rose’s other writing (1985; 1988); here
it is extended and bolstered by the fully drawn and haunting
portraits of individual students whose problems are directly related
to the ways in which these students have been (misdiagnosed and
characterized. In the case of Tranquilino, a Spanish-speaking adult
attending an English language program, for example, it becomes
clear that his difficulties stemmed not so much from his limited
“skills,” but from his attitude toward learning the English language
and from his feelings about a US. classroom. And Spanish-speaking
Lucia, a single, working mother, experienced frustrations that had
less to do with her ability to read and understand English than with
the conflict between her cultural perspective, personal background,
family history, and the assumptions underlying the work she was
assigned.
It is also through case studies such as these that Rose reveals the
kind of teaching and engagement that give rise to the development
of voice, confidence, and competence. He understands that for
these students, school represent-s an unfamiliar culture, with its own
REVIEWS 147
students, See Wai and Carlo, Freedman provides full biographical
details of their histories, tracing their childhoods in their native
countries and recounting their struggles of readjustment in the
United States, struggles that included their inevitable frustrations
with the English language:
See Wai wrote and thought in Chinese, and that was a problem. His
interests were history and literature, not mathematics and science, so he
could not hide his flawed English behind formulas and equations. He
agonized over English, bending syllables like soft wire and handling
idioms like hot coals. (pp. 205-206)
In the case of Carlos,
English confounded him, with its incongruous grammar and its devious
diction, and even in a bilingual class, he needed to repeat himself three
or four times to be understood. . . . And when he erred too often, the
teacher commanded him to write the troublesome word on the board
one hundred times. (p. 282)
Seamlessly woven into these biographies is the kind of documenta-
tion that enriches and informs the individual lives of these students,
while allowing us to view these individuals as prototypical. In the
chapter devoted to See Wai, for example, we learn about his
particular circumstances at the same time that we come to see him
as representative of other immigrants who left China in search of
“Gum San,” the “Gold Mountain,” who settled in Chinatown, a
place that contradicted the Chinese vision of “Gum San,” and yet
were expected to fulfill the stereotypical image of the “model
minority.”
Freedman’s ability (and Rose’s) to blend narrative, historical
account, and analysis represents, interestingly enough, exactly the
kind of connection making that Siegel enables her students to
undertake. She wants them to see that “history and literature aren’t
separate,” that “everything’s connected” (p. 271). So, like Rose,
Siegel insists on challenging students like See Wai and Carlos with
the types of sophisticated reading, writing, and reflection that belie
the predictions of these students’ standardized test scores; she
invites them to read, write, and use language meaningfully-this
despite, or rather because of, their limited language and literacy.
She recognizes that these students do not speak English at home,
may not have books at home, have learned to avoid and fear
writing, yet “tries to disarm the fear and soften the shame that
surround writing. . . . She practices the art of the possible” (p. 34).
We observe classroom events as Freedman captures Siegel’s
intelligence, passion, patience, gestures, and movements, and her
REVIEWS 149
REFERENCES
Applebee, A. N. (1984). Contexts for learning to write: Studies of
secondary school instruction. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Goodlad, J. I. (1984). A place called school. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Oakes, J. (1985). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality. N e w
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Rose, M. (1985). The language of exclusion: Writing instruction at the
university. College English, 47, 341-359.
Rose, M. (1988). Narrowing the mind and page: Remedial writers and
cognitive reductionism. College Composition and Communication, 39,
267-302.
Sizer, T. R. (1984). Horace’s compromise: The dilemma of the American
high school. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
VIVIAN ZAMEL
University of Massachusetts at Boston
REVIEWS 151
autobiography; it is a book which purports to be a serious scholarly
work. As such, it has some strengths, but several major flaws.
The strengths of the book include Porter’s honest and thorough
presentation of both sides of the English-only debate. Her
suggestions for improving education, while not original, are
comprehensive and well-presented. Her repeated statement that
bilingual education is often unnecessarily segregative is not
unfounded, although many efforts are being made to find workable
models which will achieve more integration without sacrificing
native language instruction (Brisk, 1991; Irujo, 1989). Her insistence
that the state of Massachusetts needs to do more for linguistic-
minority students who are not in bilingual education programs is
justified, and steps are being taken in that direction. Her pride in the
ESL program which she developed is well-deserved: Newton could
serve as a model for any system wishing to implement a program
for linguistic-minority students where native language instruction is
either not possible or not necessary.
Unfortunately, the flaws of the book far outweigh its strengths.
Because Porter’s basic premise is not unequivocally supported by
the evidence, she resorts to unscholarly strategies to make her point.
The first part of the book reads like a personal vendetta against the
Massachusetts Bureau of Transitional Bilingual Education, which
may or may not be justified, but is hardly evidence in support of the
assertion that bilingual education has failed. In the rest of the book,
Porter systematically ignores research which does not agree with
her position, and in several cases misrepresents the findings of a
study by quoting only certain aspects of the results. She uses the
work of other researchers extensively, but replaces their conclusions
with her own. Much of her evidence against bilingual education is
anecdotal, and in at least one case with which I am personally
familiar, she has twisted events to make them appear to support her
position.
It may not be realistic to expect a scholar who is promoting a
controversial position to present both sides of the issue with equal
depth and objectivity. However, it is not justifiable to give the
impression, as Porter does, that there is no research evidence for the
opposing view. For example, she presents the Baker and de Kanter
(1983) study which concluded that there was no evidence for the
effectiveness of bilingual education, but ignores the Willig (1985)
meta-analysis of the same data. Willig found that “in every instance
where there did not appear to be crucial inequalities between
experimental and comparison groups, children in the bilingual
programs averaged higher than the comparison children on
criterion instruments” (p. 312). Also ignored is a review of the
REVIEWS 153
the objectivity of Porter’s account of many other events reported in
the book, just as the examples given of her misrepresentation of
others’ work cast doubt on the objectivity of all of her research.
When she claims that linguistic-minority students in all-English
programs can achieve grade-level equivalence in 1 to 3 years, she
supports this claim by citing “author’s findings based on research” in
various school districts (p. 261), although she supplies no data to
substantiate her claim. One cannot help wondering why her
findings differ so greatly from those of Collier (1987). In a study
involving large numbers of limited English proficient (LEP)
students in all-English programs, Collier found that “depending on
age, it may take these advantaged LEP students anywhere from 4 to
8 years or more to reach the 50th NCE [normal curve equivalent] on
standardized tests across all the subject areas” (p. 637). Collier also
concluded that those children who took longer to reach grade-level
equivalence (the 5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds) were those who “received
the least amount of L1 [first language] schooling in comparison with
all other older arrivals in the study” (p. 632).
Several aspects of Porter’s position are puzzling because of their
inconsistency. She advocates structured immersion, based on the
Canadian model, as an alternative to bilingual education,
overlooking the fact that Canadian immersion programs are in
reality bilingual programs, with instruction in the native language
introduced in the third or fourth year and maintained throughout
the rest of the program. She dismisses the notion that bilingual
education can contribute to the linguistic resources of the United
States, arguing that it is unrealistic to expect this country to become
a nation of “balanced bilingual,” but ignoring the fact that
individuals and societies may reap the benefits of bilingualism
without achieving full bilingualism. Her position on this matter is
especially puzzling in light of her call for improved foreign
language programs. Her claim that she wants “to generate a national
discussion of the issues without name-calling” (p. 255) is also
puzzling, given the title of the book. To speak with forked tongue
is “to speak deceptively” (p. iv), and she accuses the bilingual
education “establishment” of speaking with forked tongue for the
last 20 years in promoting native language instruction. This implicit
assertion that advocates of bilingual education are liars is indicative
of the tone of the book, which is unfortunate. Porter’s academic
training, extensive research, and writing skills could have enabled
her to write a book providing the rational discussion which she says
she wanted to generate. Instead, she has added to “the myths, mis-
representations and distortions” (p. 1) which she purports to dispel.
Rosalie Porter and I have worked in ESL and bilingual education
REFERENCES
Baker, K. A., & de Kanter, A. A. (1982). Effectiveness of bilingual
education: A review of the literature (Technical analysis report series).
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
Brisk, M. (1991). Language and cultural harmony: An integrated bilingual
program. Unpublished manuscript, Boston University.
Collier, V. P. (1987). Age and rate of acquisition of second language for
academic purposes. TESOL Quarterly, 21 (3), 617-641.
Genesee, F. (1983). Bilingual education of majority-language children: The
immersion experiments in review. Applied Psycholinguistics, 4, 1-46.
Irujo, S. (1989, May). Bilingualism—An asset. Paper presented at the
NABE Annual Conference, Miami, FL.
Mace-Matluck, B. J. (1984). SEDL bilingual reading study. Handout
prepared for the Workshop on Research in Child Bilingualism, National
Center for Bilingual Research, Los Alamitos, CA.
Mace-Matluck, B. J., & Hoover, W. A. (1984). Teaching reading to
bilingual children study (Executive summary). Austin, TX: Southwest
Educational Development Laboratory.
McLaughlin, B. (1985). Second language acquisition in childhood: Vol. 2.
School-age children (2nd ed.). Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
United States General Accounting Office (1987). Bilingual education: A
new look at the research evidence (Briefing report to the Chairman,
Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives).
Washington, DC: Author.
REVIEWS 155
Willig, A. C. (1985). A meta-analysis of selected studies on the
effectiveness of bilingual education. Review of Educational Research,
55, 269-317.
SUZANNE IRUJO
Boston University
REVIEWS 157
explores this notion, suggesting ways in which teachers can
ascertain and address students’ agendas. Breen makes a distinction
between what is planned, what is taught, and what is learned in the
L2 curriculum, and gives advice on how teachers can cope with any
discrepancy among the three elements. In a chapter on the need to
examine classroom exercises in the context of a theoretical
framework, Stern emphasized that L2 professionals need to unify
theory, planning, and classroom behavior. This need for integration
is expressed consistently throughout the book.
The final section discusses some factors used in several
approaches to evaluating language programs (e.g., the theoretical
base, variable selection, data collection). Brown’s chapter takes a
historical approach to evaluation, examining conflicting ap-
proaches. Next, Bachman defends the use of criterion-referenced
tests for program evaluation and notes the importance of carefully
defined criteria for evaluation so that we can initiate more
comparative evaluations of programs. Hudson explores mastery
testing, and finally, Elley discusses some of the practical problems
encountered when actually evaluating a program (e. g., choosing
evaluators and designing tests).
Structuring the book into these sections reinforces the overall
decision-making process by outlining the stages the program
designer must follow. Unfortunately, Johnson’s reasons for placing
a given reading in a particular section are not always evident. For
example, he places a chapter by Hargreaves entitled “DES-lMPL-
EVALU-IGN: An Evaluator’s Checklist” into the curriculum-plan-
ning section, even though the purpose of the chapter is to provide a
framework for evaluation. Nevertheless, Johnson’s introduction and
overview compensate for the lack of unity within sections and
between chapters.
The strengths of The Second Language Curriculum lie in its
emphasis on the notion that the learner is one of the key participants
in the curricular decision-making process and that the various stages
of curriculum planning need to be integrated. This insistence may
make planning seem more complex than it has been in the past, but
this complexity reflects more accurately the reality of the situation.
Overall, this is a worthwhile book for anyone involved in
curriculum planning and implementation. The sections on ends/
means specification and on classroom implementation are
especially useful for classroom teachers because these are the tasks
that teachers most frequently perform. In addition, the chapters are
generally written in an accessible style. With its focus on practical
application, this book does not emphasize theory and research for
the issues raised. However, it is a very useful and readable book for
BARBARA L. BOYD
Nankai University, People’s Republic of China
REVIEWS 159
characteristics of a “competent” writer, the rubrics beneath each
descriptor are designed to assist readers in their assessments. A
Level 5 essay, for example, “may address some parts of the task
more effectively than others; is generally well organized and
developed; uses details to support a thesis or illustrate an idea;
displays facility in the use of language; demonstrates some syntactic
variety and range of vocabulary.”
A major strength of the TWE Scoring Guide is that it is a holistic
rather than analytic scoring guide. Since the reader is required to
give a global score that reflects the merits of a particular essay, a
holistic scoring guide gives the reader the flexibility to reward
exceptional features of an examinee’s essay. In contrast, in an
analytic scoring guide a particular weighting is given to specified
features of a text and a reader does not have the latitude to give
additional credit for exceptional aspects of a feature or even give
credit for aspects of writing not appearing on an analytic scoring
guide (see Matthews, 1990). In addition, an analytic scoring guide
frequently diverts the reader’s attention from the central message of
the text because of its focus on discrete elements in the text.
The TWE Scoring Guide encourages readers to “focus on what
the examinee does well” and the descriptors and rubrics are
sufficiently flexible to allow readers to use their discretion in
making judgments. While the descriptors establish that the
“rhetorical and syntactic” features of a script are the main criteria
by which the essays are to be judged, there is latitude in the
interpretation of these descriptors. Readers are also encouraged to
be flexible in their judgment of what constitutes an appropriate
interpretation of the essay topic. “Though examinees are asked to
write on a specific topic, parts of the topic may be treated by
implication.” The TWE Scoring Guide thus gives readers the
flexibility to “bias for best” (Swain, 1984, p. 15).
Notwithstanding these strengths, the TWE Scoring Guide does
not give sufficient attention to the role of the reader in the process
of assessment. Judgments that readers make are as much a function
of the reader’s engagement with the text as the quality of the
examinee’s writing. In other words, readers come to the text with
their own expectations, background knowledge, and interests. As
the readers read the scripts of the examinees, they are actively
attempting to make sense of the examinees’ texts. In order to do this,
readers have to activate their own schemata and respond to the
texts—not as judges, but as participants in a communicative event.
This is not acknowledged in the TWE Scoring Guide.
The TWE Scoring Guide assumes that meaning is buried in the
examinee’s text, to be ferreted out by the reader—a reader who is,
REVIEWS 161
of confidence that the TESOL profession has in the institution that
trains the TWE readers to use the scoring guide and in the standards
of writing competence that are established in the TWE benchmark
essays. The TWE Scoring Guide remains a work of art and not an
instrument of science.
REFERENCES
Educational Testing Service. (1989). TOEFL Test of Written English
Guide. Princeton, NJ: Author.
Educational Testing Service. (1990). 1990-91 bulletin of information for
TOEFL & TSE. Princeton, NJ: Author.
Hughes, A. (1989). Testing for Language Teachers. C a m b r i d g e :
Cambridge University Press.
Matthews, M. (1990). The measurement of productive skills: Doubts
concerning the assessment criteria of certain public examinations. ELT
Journal, 44 (2), 117-121.
Peirce, B. N. (1990). Comments on “Toward a pedagogy of possibility in
the teaching of English internationally: People’s English in South
Africa”: The author responds. TESOL Quarterly 24 (l), 105-112.
Stansfield, C. W. (1986). A history of the Test of Written English: The
developmental year. Language Testing, 3 (2), 224-234.
Swain, M. (1984). Teaching and testing communicatively. TESL Talk, 15,
7-18.
APPENDIX
Test of Written English (TWE ) Scoring Guide
(Revised 2/90)
Readers will assign scores based on the following scoring guide. Though examinees are asked
to write on a specific topic, parts of the topic may be treated by implication. Readers should
focus on what the examinee does well.
Scores
6 Demonstrates clear competence in writing on both the rhetorical and syntactic levels,
though it may have occasional errors.
A paper in this category
-effectively addresses the writing task
-is well organized and well developed
–uses clearly appropriate details to support a thesis or illustrate ideas
-displays consistent facility in the use of language
-demonstrates syntactic variety and appropriate word choice
REVIEWS 163
BOOK NOTICES
The TESOL Quarterly welcomes short evaluative reviews of print and nonprint
publications relevant to TESOL professionals. Book notices may not exceed 500
words and must contain some discussion of the significance of the work in the
context of current theory and practice in TESOL.
165
and implementing second stage Amnesty ESL/Civics programs is no
longer the most pressing concern as it was in 1988. However, there is still
a need for appropriate resources, materials, and curricula—both for
meeting the needs of the 40-hour ESL/Civics curriculum and for
citizenship preparation.
The books reviewed below are appropriate as sourcebooks for ESL/
Civics, History, or Citizenship preparation and can be adapted to amnesty
requirements, citizenship preparation, or as content-based units in other
ESL curricula. They were selected because they challenge the accepted
version of U.S. history represented in many social studies or civics texts
(including the federal textbooks), because they redefine “what counts” as
civics and citizenship content and preparation, or because they provide
useful information at an accessible language level. Some of the books are
sources for teachers themselves—to reanalyze history and civics in light of
the needs, demands, and rights of the students in classes. A note indicates
when a resource includes material in languages other than English.
My book notices appear with those of Richard Levy (Bureau of Adult
Education, Commonwealth of Massachusetts) and Amnesty or Citizenship
teachers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. My thanks to Richard Levy
for his collaboration on this project.
Content Area ESL: Social Studies. Dennis Terdy. Palatine, IL: Linmore,
1986. Pp. 169. (Available from the publisher, P.O. Box 1546, Palatine, IL
60078)
Dennis Terdy broke new ground in 1986 with Content Area ESL in
making a U.S. history text available and accessible to adult nonnative
speakers of English. Along with a complete rationale and syllabus, the text
lends itself not only to Amnesty and Citizenship classes, but also to high
school worksite, and other language classes where learners express interest
in learning more about U.S. history. The author notes that the book was
written for the “high-beginning-low-intermediate adult, and incorporates a
variety of content-based approaches into its 19 chapters of U.S. history”
(p. i). From “Native Americans” to “The U.S. Today,” each chapter begins
with a personal survey to activate learners’ prior knowledge, to develop
schema, and to introduce key vocabulary before reading. As learners are
challenged cognitively, they also have ample opportunity to practice
reading and writing strategies, to develop “graphical” (J. Isserlis, personal
communication) literacy capabilities, and to expand language skills
through writing and in-class discussion. By integrating content and learner
experiences through the use of maps, diagrams, graphs, and timelines, the
book allows for the inevitable range of learning styles and levels prevalent
among most adult learning centers nationwide. Additionally, illustrations
of key events throughout the text facilitate increased comprehension and
possibilities for discussion.
As a core text, Content Area ESL might be too difficult for beginning-
level literacy students in Amnesty programs. However, as Amnesty
programs begin to redefine themselves, this text would be a good source
for continuing to provide learners with the opportunity to study U.S.
history. The refugee and immigrant experiences of the past 200 years are
reflected in the text, and the potential for further learning through
students’ sharing of their own lives—through language experience
activities, oral histories, problem-posing—make Terdy’s work a text to
have and use.
JANET ISSERLIS
International Institute of Rhode Island
LENORE BALLIRO
Adult Literacy Resource Institute, Roxbury Community
College/ University of Massachusetts at Boston
REFERENCE
Freire, Paul. (1985). The Politics of Education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin &
Garvey.
SANDRA MORRA
International Institute of Rhode Island
Some of the most innovative, flexible, and creative ESL and literacy
materials seem to emerge from Canada. Towards Participation is no
exception. As the title suggests, this short, concise guidebook has a
participatory perspective on citizenship. That is, citizenship is viewed as a
process where people shape and challenge their roles as citizens rather
than passively assimilating into the status quo. This participatory
perspective is reflected in the kind of lesson planning encouraged by the
authors.
The series of model lesson plans in Toward Participation focuses on
“issues and disputes” in the news that can be used to “develop the attitudes,
skills, and knowledge needed by learners for participatory citizenship.”
The authors recognize that it is not enough simply to encourage teachers to
develop learner-centered materials; they provide a structure and sequence
for adapting real-life materials for the classroom. This is particularly
practical and comforting for the new teacher or the teacher who wants to
adopt participatory practices but who may be reluctant to stray from the
prescribed sequence in a commercial workbook. The authors demystify
the participatory process by developing a sequence of sample lessons
using an article from a local newspaper (on transportation cuts for the
elderly) and adapting it in different ways for different purposes.
One lesson focuses on the photograph that accompanies a news story as
a way to build context and activate/develop schema for the article itself;
another focuses on reading and analyzing content as a basis for a debate
that follows. Language skills are not neglected in the interest of issues; they
are presented in context throughout. For example, activities for the news
article begin with literal comprehension activities (including retelling the
story through strips of dialogue and cartoons) and move toward oral
language practice in lessons that guide students through preparing for and
actually holding the debate.
In another section, guidelines for a role play show how to connect the
reading material to the lives of the students and to uncover issues in
students’ own communities—thus providing sources of material to develop
a next series of lessons. After practicing with the lesson plans the authors
provide, teachers should find the process of bringing current newspaper
articles into their classes less mysterious and more inviting.
LENORE BALLIRO
Adult Literacy Resource Institute, Roxbury Community
College/ University of Massachusetts at Boston
RICHARD LEVY
Bureau of Adult Education, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
RICHARD LEVY
Bureau of Adult Education, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
LENORE BALLIRO
Adult Literacy Resource Institute, Roxbury Community
College/ University of Massachusetts at Boston
RICHARD LEVY
Bureau of Adult Education, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
* * * * *
JACQUELYN MILMAN
University of Guam
179
METHOD
Language tests, consisting of a timed writing sample and the Test of
English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), were administered to the 56
Soviet students in the summer of 1988 at Middlebury College prior to their
study at U.S. colleges. A questionnaire was administered at the same time.
During the spring of 1989, a poststudy questionnaire was given to the 55
Soviet students who successfully completed the fall 1988 semester. Forty-
eight students completed and returned this poststudy questionnaire, a
return rate of 87%. Only those who responded to this poststudy question-
naire were included in the inferential analysis. Information requested on
the questionnaires included standard demographic data, self-ratings of
academic language tasks, predictions of academic success, grades earned
during the fall semester, and ratings of preparation for study in the U.S.
RESULTS
Language Proficiency and Academic Success
Previous research has suggested the difficulty of predicting academic
success based on TOEFL scores (Hale et al., 1984; Light et al., 1987;
American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers,
1971). This same difficulty emerges with this group of Soviet students.
Their mean TOEFL score was 462 (SD = 85, range = 307-613). Although
the Educational Testing Service (ETS) (1987) reports that 74% of the
colleges in a recent survey recommended full-time English study for
students with TOEFL scores below 547, these Soviet students achieved an
overall grade point average (GPA) of 3.4 (4.0 = A). They achieved this
despite the fact that 43 of them had TOEFL scores below 547, the cutoff
point for full-time English study reported in the ETS study.
Although it would have been difficult to predict the academic success
achieved by these students based on their TOEFL scores, we did find a
significant correlation between their summer 1988 TOEFL scores and
GPA earned during fall 1988 (r= .33, p < .05). In addition, these TOEFL
scores did correlate positively with the number of courses successfully
completed by the Soviet students (r = .25, p < .05), a finding consistent
with Light, Xu, and Mossop’s 1987 study of international students at the
State University of New York at Albany. Our analysis also showed that
these TOEFL scores were highly correlated with the total number of
words written by the Soviet students in a writing sample administered at
the same time (r = .69, p < .0001). As did their TOEFL scores, the total
number of words on their writing samples correlated positively with their
GPA (r = .26, p < .05). Finally, we found that TOEFL means were
significantly higher for English and humanities majors than for science
majors (t = 2.40, p < .05). (See Table 1.)
were asked to rate their ability at these tasks on a scale of 1 (do with much
difficulty) to 6 (do very easily). Table 2 below shows the mean ratings
given to these 10 tasks on the pre- and poststudy questionnaires and the
results of paired t tests. As noted on the table, the students’ self-rated
abilities increased significantly on 7 of these 10 tasks. The three tasks in
which the Soviets reported least improvement (participate in class
discussions, read in areas other than major, present oral reports) are also
suggested as problematic areas for other international learners in similar
contexts (e.g., Abraham, 1990).
These findings suggest that for this group of learners, with widely
differing English language skills, a single semester of study at a U.S.
college provided sufficient contextual support to allow them to significant-
ly improve their confidence in performing an important set of language
related academic tasks.
We also noted a significant positive correlation between the Soviet
students’ ratings of their abilities on the 10 academic tasks and their
TOEFL scores. The positive correlation held for both pre- and poststudy
ability ratings on these tasks (r = .42 & .37, p < .005).
predictions for the first semester (r = .25, p < .05) but not for the second
semester. Students’ high school grades and their home-country college
grades were significantly correlated (r = .74, p < .001). These grades
were also positively correlated with their actual grade point averages in
U.S. colleges in fall 1988 (r = 29, p < .05). Unlike Biggs and Johnson’s
(1972) findings with U.S. college students, the Soviet students’ prestudy
self-predictions of academic success on a scale of 1 to 4 (poor-excellent)
did not correlate significantly with either their high school or home college
grades or with their earned GPA at U.S. colleges.
DISCUSSION
Traditional wisdom might have predicted severe difficulties for these
Soviet undergraduate students in their first experience at a U.S. college.
These predictions would have been based on their low TOEFL scores (an
average of 462, ranging from 303 to 613; 43 of the 56 students scoring
below 547), on the shock of studying in a new culture, and on the
requirement that they take half of their coursework outside their major
field. In spite of these factors, the majority of the Soviet students were
successful during the first semester of study at a U.S. college, as measured
by their mean 3.4 grade point average, and by the average of 12 credits
successfully completed during the semester.
What might account for their successes despite the negative indicators?
Clearly these were special students carefully selected by their home
institutions for study in the U.S. They appeared highly motivated and
confident during the summer orientation program, and this confidence is
reflected in their responses on our prestudy questionnaire. Some
researchers have argued that grading at U.S. colleges is generally more
lenient for international students (e.g., K. Wilson of Educational Testing
Service, personal communication, 1990). Beyond this, we might look to
recent research on the roles of interaction in second language contexts for
clues to their success. A number of such studies are consistent with the
insights of Vygotsky (1978) and his concern with the role of social
interaction in learning. One recent study, for example, demonstrated the
importance of interactionally modified input to comprehension in a study
of adult ESL learners (Pica, Young, & Doughty, 1987). Somewhat earlier,
John-Steiner (1985) and Wong Filmore (1976) conducted separate studies
with Finnish immigrant children in Swedish schools and Mexican children
in U.S. schools. The results of the two studies suggest the importance of
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Our thanks to Nancy Tumposky and Ed Witaszek, colleagues at the Middlebury College
Soviet orientation program, for their assistance in data collection and their helpful comments.
Thanks also to Raymond Benson, Director of the American Collegiate Consortium at
Middlebury College, and to the Soviet students who participated in the study for their help
and patience. This study was supported in part by the American Collegiate Consortium at
Middlebury College and by the School of Education, The University at Albany, State
University of New York.
Copies of the questionnaires may be obtained by writing the authors.
REFERENCES
Abraham, P. (1990, March). 600 on TOEFL is not enough. Paper presented at the
24th Annual TESOL Convention, San Francisco, CA.
American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. (1971).
AACRAO-AID participant selection and placement study. (Report to the
Agency for International Development, U.S. Department of State). Washington,
DC: USAID.
Biggs, D., & Johnson, J. (1972). Self-made academic predictions of junior college
students. Journal of Educational Research, 6, 85-88.
Carroll, J. (1967). Foreign language proficiency levels attained by language majors
near graduation from college. Foreign Language Annals, 1, 131-151.
Clark, J. L. D. (1981). College students’ knowledge and beliefs: A summary of
global understanding. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service ED 215 653).
Educational Testing Service. (1987). Guidelines for use of TOEFL scores.
Princeton, NJ: Author.
Authors’ Address: c/o Light, TESOL Program, The University at Albany, State
University of New York, Albany, NY 12222.
CONCLUSIONS
According to Alvermann (1990), “Research has established that reading
involves not so much what we do with our eyes as how interested we are
in what we are reading” (p. 105). Administering a reading inventory is a
way to assess students’ reading interests. Students can benefit because
instructors can use this information to avoid pitfalls when selecting reading
materials for their theme-based reading units, extensive reading (Bamford,
1984) or sustained silent reading (Carrell& Eisterhold, 1983; Lipp, 1988b).
When searching for readings on world problems, instructors often use
current newspaper and news magazine articles. When selecting literature,
they may have tried to use reading lists of adolescent and adult books such
as the one by Reed (1988) to locate interesting books for their students.
Unfortunately, our study suggests that unless instructors also consider
shorter graded readers such as those recommended by Bamford (1984)
and Hill and Thomas (1988), they may find that many students consider
the books too long. We need reading lists that focus on the genres that
students want to read (Brown [1987], Lipp [1990], and Reed [1988]
provide lists of suggested books on several high-interest genres) and that
include titles of relatively short books, i.e., those about 150 pages in length
or shorter. With this information, we can help our students become better
readers.
REFERENCES
Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print: A
Summarv. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Center for the Study of Reading.
Alvermann, D. E., & Muth, K. D. (1990). Affective goals in reading and writing. In
G. G. Duffy (Ed.), Reading in the middle schools (2nd ed., pp. 97-110). Newark,
NJ: International Reading Association.
Bamford, J. (1984). Extensive reading by means of graded readers. Reading in a
Foreign Language, 2 (2), 218-260.
Brown, D. S. (1987). A world of books: An annotated reading list for ESL/EFL
students (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
DATA COLLECTION
The data for the present study were obtained from audiotaped
recordings of lessons given by 10 EFL university teachers at Sultan Qaboos
University in Oman. Each teacher recorded one lesson (given to the same
group of students) during the first week of the semester, one during the
fifth week and another during the tenth week.
In order to sample SRS in lessons to students of different proficiency
levels, thereby adding to the generalizability of the findings, recordings
were made in first-, second-, and third-year classes.
Four male teachers, one English and three from the U. S., each recorded
three language lessons with first-semester science students. Testing of this
particular enrollment of students on the Comprehensive English Language
Test (CELT) show them to be of elementary proficiency although a
minority of intermediate-level students were placed in some classes.
Generally, however, the students can be regarded as false beginners as
they had received, on average, 9 years of English language instruction at
school.
Three teachers, two female and one male, all English, recorded three
language lessons with second-year agriculture students whose overall
proficiency can best be described as high elementary; however, there
were, in these classes, rather fewer of the more advanced students and, in
the class of one teacher, rather more lower-level students.
Three other teachers—two female and one male, two English and one
Irish—recorded language lessons with third-year students of lower-
intermediate proficiency in the Faculty of Medicine.
NS-NS baselines were obtained as each teacher presented a body of
information (e.g., on why Arabic is so difficult to learn) in a short talk to
groups of NSs in a formal setting (classroom or office). (It has to be
DATA ANALYSIS
SR was calculated in syllables per second (sps) using digital stop-watch
timing. To promote some degree of methodological comparability with
Hakansson’s study, SR was calculated from the first two 30-sec periods
when the teacher spoke continuously without interruption of any kind and
in which no pause was equal to or greater than 3 sec. Pausological literature
(e.g., Goldman-Eisler, 1954) indicates that samples of about 100 syllables
in length (normally achieved in 30 sec of continuous speech) are required
to give stable rates. Moreover, longer samples are often not found in EFL
lessons where interaction frequently interrupts teacher talk. The 3-sec on-
time threshold was adopted on the basis of previous findings on pause
frequency and duration (Griffiths, 1990b). The segments sampled
necessarily included different genres of speech (e. g., the spontaneous
giving of instructions, oral reading) and, to control for this, the samples are
best regarded as group, rather than individual, data.
RESULTS
The findings on SR in lessons to the first-, second-, and third-year groups
and the changes in rates observed over the three time periods are given in
Table 1.
TABLE 1
Speech Rates (sps) of 10 EFL Teachers for 3 Time Periods,
With NS-NNS Baseline
Year of
students Teacher Week 1 Week 5 Week 10 NS-NS
1 A 3.8 3.2 3.4 4.3
1 B 2.8 2.7 3.4 2.8
1 C 2.4 2.3 2.8 3.1
1 D 4.3 4.0 4.5 4.1
2 E 2.8 2.5 2.7 3.3
2 F 3.4 2.8 2.5 3.6
2 G 2.6 3.2 3.2 3.0
3 3.7 3.7 3.9 3.8
3 3.1 3.5 2.8 3.0
3 3.6 3.5 3.7 3.1
TABLE 2
Means and Standard Deviations of Speech Rates (sps)
of EFL Teachers by Student Proficiency Level
TABLE 3
Means and Standard Deviations of Speech Rates (sps)
of EFL Teachers by Time Period (N = 10)
Time m SD
Week 1 3.2 0.6
Week 5 3.1 0.6
Week 10 3.3 0.6
TABLE 4
Means and Standard Deviations of Speech Rates (sps)
of EFL Teachers to Native and Nonnative Speakers
Condition m SD
NS-NNS 3.3 0.5
NS-NS 3.4 0.5
CONCLUSION
The major findings of this study, that SR in language classes does not
differ from a NS-NS baseline and does not significantly vary in speech to
NNSs of differing proficiency levels, would not be expected from a
reading of the literature. The evidence, from this and other studies in this
series of investigations of temporal variables (Griffiths, 1990b), is,
however, unequivocal: Adjustment of rate is the exception rather than the
norm. This does not, of course, mean that no SR modification occurs, but
rather indicates that it might not be as pervasive as the extant literature
suggests. A nonsignificant statistical finding in this case is therefore an
illuminating one.
195
problems, the large number of basic concepts to be mastered, and
the students’ time constraints and other responsibilities, the
instructor considered the enterprise to have been a success.
Subsequently, however, negative student comments about the
instructor were sent to the instructor’s dean. The comments
appeared to have been rewritten by a native speaker of English,
who added the recommendation that the instructor be allowed to
“fry in hell.” Inasmuch as some of the comments were used by the
dean as evidence that the instructor was lacking in “cultural
sensitivity,” this case offers an opportunity to inquire into the use of
this concept in teacher evaluation.
CONCLUSIONS
This case is offered as a caution, Whether the university’s
uncritical acceptance of the student comments as valid reflects the
belief in a just world or something else, what emerges from this
episode is the disturbing possibility that factors which would
Research Issues
The TESOL Quarterly publishes brief commentaries on aspects of qualitative and
quantitative research. For this issue, we asked two researchers to address the fol-
lowing question: “To what extent do ethnographers investigate general research
questions, and to what extent do they test specific hypotheses?”
A Researcher Comments. . .
POLLY ULICHNY
Harvard University
RICHARD K. BLOT
Lehman College, City University of New York
THE AUTHOR
Richard K. Blot is Assistant Professor in the Graduate Program in Reading at
Lehman College, City University of New York.