Buckland Weekly #10: Pick'n'Mix

As always, the information and descriptions in this post should be treated as being my opinion only. Far more information about all of this - both pro and con - can be found by a little internet research.

One of the things that will be mentioned and then rapidly passed over in the orientation is the existence of many different methodologies for English teaching. A few of them will be given one sentence definitions but that’s about it apart from the advice to look them up on the internet. This article will give a little more information about each for those who are curious but it’s not intended a substitute for your own research. It’s just a brief overview. By all means read up on it all elsewhere.

First I need a caveat.

I’m not actually suggesting that you should use these methods. What you should use is your professional judgment to select the elements of various techniques that are suitable for your lessons. I’ve heard this called informed eclecticism – I prefer to think of it as pick’n’mix. Our preferred methodology will be covered in greater detail during the orientation.

So, let’s get to it and let’s begin with Suggestopedia.

Suggestopedia was a methodology devised by a psychotherapist named Georgi Lozanov. Most educational theorists nowadays consider it discredited. The primary element of the method is to present material in comfortable surroundings perhaps with soft music, comfortable chairs and a pleasant environment. (Right there you can see how it would never be possible in a Chinese school with eighty kids in a cramped classroom.) Teaching is done with mother tongue explanations of grammar and vocabulary. There is an implied belief in passive learning – the idea that simple exposure to a language will somehow cause the students to absorb it. Input is provided by the teacher reading over a relaxing musical background. Students use singing and games to reinforce what they have learned. The teacher is encouraged not to separate himself or herself from the class and to participate in a more student-like manner and to guide the lesson rather than to instruct it.

Lozanov believed that this technique could only be delivered by teachers who had been specifically and highly trained in the methodology and that those not trained should not attempt it because it would be ineffective or actually counter-productive.

Moving on we have The Silent Way.

Two things immediately come to mind about The Silent Way. First it isn't, in spite of the name, completely silent, though the teacher does far less talking than in any other methodology. Second is that, when done as intended, it would be next to impossible to mix with any other methods as it uses proprietary materials in the form of coloured wooden rods (called Cuisenaire rods), a colour to sound correspondence chart and various other charts for words and pronunciation. Teacher input is often done by pointing to things on the chart and having the class learn to associate colours with sounds so that they can learn words. When the teacher does speak it is usual to say things only once with no teacher repetitions so that, in theory, the students are forced to focus all their attention on every word. Grammar is not explicitly presented though the teacher does indicate (silently of course!) whether the students are right or wrong. They are expected to self-correct or peer-correct by a trial and error approach.

The Silent Way was the brainchild of Caleb Gattegno who believed that the teacher's role is to simply focus the students on what needs to be learned and provide materials that will help them learn it.

While few teachers would want to adopt the method (and fewer still would ever be in a position to adopt it, even if they wanted to) there are some elements that correspond to more general teaching practice. For example, there is the idea of remaining silent when a student makes a mistake and indicating by gesture that something was wrong so that it can be self-corrected. I make use of this a lot.

Also, where we have had vocabulary earlier in the lesson that is still on the board I will often reinforce it by pointing and waiting rather than repeating it. Sometimes with grammar I will use a finger counting method to indicate that words have been omitted or that a particular word is wrong. These are all elements of the Silent Way but as a complete methodology it requires extensive use of proprietary materials and would be difficult to implement in any large class.

So, let's take a look at CLL (Community Language Learning)

CLL was developed by a psychologist and counselor rather than an educator and it shows. His name was Charles Curran. The stages of language development, as described, mimic the stages of child development: create a feeling of belonging, develop confidence and a measure of independence, become independent, become secure enough to accept criticism, adopt the “adult” role instead of the “child” role. Basically the idea is that students are not only responsible for learning, they are responsible for deciding what is learned. Instruction must be done with small groups (no more than a dozen) and must be done in monolingual classes. The teacher must be fluent in both the mother tongue and the target language as his role is that of a facilitator and counsellor who will translate and correct whatever sentences the students wish to know and guide them towards understanding. This is emphasised by the fact that in the terminology of the method the word “teacher” is replaced by the word “knower”.

And then there is TPR (Total Physical Response)

As with the other methods this was developed by one man, James Asher and as with the other methods he was not a teacher but a psychologist. Surprising how many psychologists thought they were better able to teach than teachers were! Fundamentally the teacher gives instructions and the students respond by physically obeying them. The drawbacks are immediately obvious. The lessons are essentially one long game of “Simon Says” and while it can be used for teaching basics of the language (especially imperatives), it's hard to see how more complex topics at higher levels would work. This has been the main criticism levelled at it by accademics though its supporters claim that it can be used for all levels. In our Chinese classroom more practical considerations come into play. First there simply isn't space to do it. The limit of commands that could physically be obeyed would be “Stand Up” and “Sit Down”.

Finally we have another one-man's-vision method and in this case the man was Robin Callan, creator of the Callan method.

You will find it difficult to get objective information about this method as virtually every internet source is from someone promoting the method, from a teacher or a school using the method. There are however a few youtube videos you could watch to get an idea and while grand claims are made for the method to me it looks very much like the way you would teach a parrot to say “Who's a pretty boy then.” Absolutely no teaching skill is required and lessons can be delivered by anyone who can read the target language out loud. Lessons are taught entirely from a series of scripts devised by Robin Callan and deviation from the scripts is not allowed. Lessons are taught at breakneck speed with the teacher reading from the script and then requiring exact responses from the students. Like this

“Today is Wednesday, today is Wednesday. What day is it today?”

“Today is Wednesday.”

“Yesterday was Tuesday, yesterday was Tuesday. What day was it yesterday?”

“Yesterday was Tuesday.”

Creative use of the language is virtually non existent. Answering “Yesterday was my Birthday.” would be considered wrong and the exercise would be repeated. Lesson preparation consists solely of bookmarking the appropriate page in the (very thick) teachers' binder where all the scripts are printed.

Well that's it. A round up of the methods we don't use. This might strike you as an irrelevant post. You want to know how we encourage teachers to teach. Generally we like the more mainstream communicative methods. We are oral English teachers and our job is to get the students using the language they have already learned in a natural way to communicate with each other.

So what was the point of this post? Maybe there wasn't one but personally I think it's useful to know some of the theory and that includes theory that I don't agree with. Also I can find something useful to take away from most methodologies. Even the quickfire call-response routine of the Callan method can be used occasionally in class to reinforce points made in another way or to introduce sets of related vocabulary though it would be boring and exhausting to make it the basis of the whole course.

In short, I approve of a pick'n'mix approach to individual tasks within a lesson but overall I'd encourage a communicative approach. These novel methods are all very well but we have the practicalities to consider.