ANUPI, A.C. 2006

A sociación acional N niversitaria Urofesores de de PI nglés, A.C. “Towards Greater Professionalization in Language Teaching”

Ismael Garrido Rivera & Armando González Salinas ISSN 1870-2074

Towards Greater Professionalization in Language Teaching

Conference Proceedings 2006

Opening New Horizons in ELT

Vol. 4, 2006

Towards Greater Professionalization in Language Teaching Copyrigth 2006 by AsociaciĂłn Nacional Universitaria de Profesores de InglĂŠs, A. C. All rights in these conference proceedings are reserved, no part of the Conference Proceedings 2006 may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISSN 1870-2074

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

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Real-Life projects in the translation classroom: Procedure, Process and Evaluation Susan Cranfield…………………………………………………………………..…………………………………………..….

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Newspeak in Politics: Different Emphasis for Diferent Cultures.

A case in some Ameriacan/Spanish Speeches Concepción Hernández Guerra…………………………………………………………………………………….………...

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Teaching English Effectively Using English Language Texts Beverly J. Hearn/Peggy F. Hopper……………………………………………………………………………….………...

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Listening to Teachers’ Voices on Professional Development Strategies Nelly Paulina Trejo Guzmán……………………………………………………………………………………..…..……...

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Facilitating the Acquisition of English Vocabulary Nancy Killick/Wendy Kipnis………………………………………………………………………………………….………..

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Cultural Awareness and the common European Framework (CEF) Frank Farmer………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….………...

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The Vocabulary Learning Strategies of University EFL Learners Alfredo Marín Marín………………………………………………………………………………………………….………...

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Activity Theory and Second Language Teaching and Learning John R. Haught………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………...

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Explicit vocabulary learning and the perfomance of beginners in a Brazilian University EFL writing program Vera Lucia Posnik Roloff………………………………………………………….……………………………….………...

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A Proposal for the Teaching of Culture Linda Quendoz……………………………………………………………..………………………………………….………...

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Raising the Status of English Teaching on Campus: A Plenary Panel Frances Boyd/Maite Mallen/Dixie Santana.………………………………………………………………….………...

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Testing and Teaching the Semantic Component of Vocabulary Knowledge James Milton……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………...

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Promoting US Cultural Awareness in EFL through song M. Karen Jogan & Jacqueline Benevento…………………………………………………………………….………...

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EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

English teachers around the world have to find an immediate response to their day after day commitment in the classroom and the opportunities to succeed depend very much in their sincere concern to keep updated.

Well aware of each every kind of challenge, ANUPI continues with the organization of its Annual International Conference entirely devoted to help EFL/ESL teachers to face those demands our profession calls for by inviting all of you to share and learn what we or other EFL/ESL teachers and researchers have proved to be useful when facing and finding solutions to these challenges.

This year, we are proud to present the conference proceedings of our Fourth International Conference “Pragmatics, Semantics and Cultural Awareness in ELT” that took place in September 2006 in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico. This event is the result of hard work and never ending interest of many EFL/ESL teachers and researchers to contribute to help on everybody’s professionalization, to all those who have graciously chose ANUPI as the best forum to share their knowledge and research finding, we deeply appreciate it. Consequently, it is also the result of the great work and effort of our ANUPI colleagues whose main concern is to make every new conference better that the one before.

We hope that the selection of the articles for this occasion is both an enjoyment to read and a tool help you enhance your everyday work.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This edition has been possible due to the enthusiast and untiring help and inspiring input of our dear colleagues Margarita Muñoz, Carlos Huerta, Martha Seguí, Svetlana Sánchez, Armando Alcalá, and Cristina Seguí. Because each and everyone of you ANUPI community members are the engine and inspiration of our executive committee work, we would like to express our sincere appreciation with a special note to the speakers and participants who have been part of our Fourth International Conference.

Ismael Garrido Rivera igarrido@anupi.org.mx

Armando González Salinas argonza@anupi.org.mx

REAL-LIFE PROJECTS IN THE TRANLATION CLASSROOM: PROCEDURE, PROCESS AND EVALUATION Susan Cranfield Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria INTRODUCTION This paper shows how a real-life translation project (into the L2) was set up in a university classroom using a series of tasks designed to guide the preparation of the end-product that would be handed to the client and later made available to the public domain. We address the rationale that lies behind both the design of translation tasks and the use of real-life projects in the classroom, and put forward arguments for the motivational impact of such an undertaking.

In this article we explore the use of real-life projects in the Translation classroom, providing pedagogical, motivational and professional rationale for their use in a translator-training programme, even with students who are at a relatively early stage of their studies. We also describe our own experience of such an undertaking at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, with emphasis on the structure (or scaffolding) required to set up the project (including the design of pedagogical tasks to aid learning and facilitate the qualitative outcome of the translation, and the framework provided to aid organisation at both an internal and external level), monitoring progression of the translation itself and the evaluation of both second language development and translation skills as part of a year-long academic course.

Traditionally, translating into the second language (L2) is viewed, at best, as an undesirable activity, and it may seem at first sight a daring undertaking for students with limited English language and translation experience to attempt a real-life translation project into the second language. However, in our experience, employers often expect employees with languagerelated qualifications to be able to slot into a variety of professional roles, to be capable of functioning competently in two or three languages and to have no difficulty in translating into and out of any combination of them.

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It is also important to point out here that this second year subject is the only experience students have during their degree programme of translating semi-specialised texts on varied topics addressed to the general public, since in the third and fourth years the specialised subjects Economic and Legal Translation and Scientific and Technical Translation are introduced.

Professional translators in the Canary Islands (whose economy is dependent on the tourist industry) are frequently commissioned to translate into the foreign language, texts that are directed at tourists and foreign visitors to sites of geographical interest, exhibitions, galleries and trade fairs.

A further motivation for providing authentic professional experience for students is the European Area for Higher Education philosophy which attempts to achieve the unification of university study programmes across the European Union in order to ensure common core content and thus facilitate student staff and mobility throughout the EU. According to their guidelines, programmes should be based on learning rather than teaching, move away from teacher-centred presentation, and provide work experience in the real world, adapting to employers needs. (The latter is a controversial idea, but it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss it).

There is theoretical support for the translation project in the work of Don Kiraly (2000), who argues for making learning a ‘situated experience’ (42), that is, relevant to both students’ previous knowledge and to targeted professional behaviour. This means of learning through authentic action with real constraints and deadlines, but at the same time guided and supervised by a professional, may be considered the maximum expression of authenticity in the classroom. The project is inherently collaborative and leads to a great deal of discussion, criticism and negotiation, all essential elements in the process of translating. According to Kiraly’s social constructivist approach “people have no choice but to create or construct meanings and knowledge through participation in the interpersonal, inter-subjective interaction that the philosopher Richard Rorty has called 'the conversation of mankind'” (2000: 4).

Taking these arguments into account, a real-life translation project that is carried out under guidance in the classroom and that provides learners with hands-on experience of working into the L2 can be justified as both a pedagogical task and a practical activity in gaining professional experience. The latter can be considered especially relevant, since no practical work experience is

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required as part of the translator-training programme. The project we describe here is inherently learner-centred, with students developing self-organisational abilities and assuming full responsibility for research, documentation resources, editing, and translator-client interaction.

They also gain experience in working to a deadline and develop a sense of responsibility both towards the client and the other members of their translation team.

Finally, we have found the positive impact on group and classroom dynamics, and both intrinsic and extrinsic student motivation in this type of project to be incalculable. The distance between teachers and learners is reduced, as the teacher becomes ‘humanised’, working as part of the team alongside the students, providing guidance and language support, but unable to provide all the answers to questions which require research and documentation in the subject area of the text. The real-life project is challenging to both teachers (who have to be prepared to relinquish control) and students (who have to take on new responsibilities), but we consider it to be an exciting and worthwhile undertaking which is reflected in the evaluation of our project below.

Just eight weeks into the academic year 2003/04, we were approached by a colleague from the Department of Biology at the ULPGC to ask whether we could translate part of an important environmental project, jointly funded by the Spanish Department for the Environment, the WWF, the FundaciĂłn Universitaria de Las Palmas and the ULPGC. The document was the content of the panels that formed part of an itinerant exhibition, Canarias por una Costa Viva. The project, as well as involving diverse areas of research, also aimed to raise public awareness of the current state of the Canary Island coastlines and the importance of moderating our use of their resources, as well as encouraging voluntary participation in their conservation. The exhibition was interactive and presented two mascots who encouraged visitors to solve puzzles and find answers to questions about the characteristics of the Canary Island coast and the marine life that populates it. At the time of the commission, the exhibition was on show in the Public Library; it would then move on to other destinations of tourist interest around the island and also travel to other islands in the archipelago. The proposal was transmitted by the teachers to the students who were keen to take up the challenge.

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After an initial meeting with the client where the deadlines and conditions for the translation were discussed, the first step in this participative process was for the teachers to meet and design a project outline that set up the scaffolding for the task; a framework in which the students could organise themselves autonomously but with a certain uniformity of criteria and roles. It should be emphasised here that in this subject we work with large numbers of students (approximately 90 regularly attend class in three different groups), so the whole text was divided within each group in order not to necessitate inter-group interaction and collaboration which would have been very complicated for timetable reasons. (That task was left to the teachers!).

Each group was divided into translation teams of four people and roles were assigned by the students themselves to each member of the team. These were: Team Leader, Terminology Manager, Documentation Manager, and Editor. It was stressed that whoever embarked on the project had to be committed until the end, otherwise they would not receive the certificate of collaboration.

The project began with a guided visit to the exhibition itself (which by this time had moved to Agaete, a village some 40km outside Las Palmas). This proved to be a most rewarding experience, both educationally and socially. The museum guides were exceptionally helpful and attentive and the chance to see everything from the visitor’s angle was invaluable in the subsequent task of translating the exhibition panels and instructions for the interactive displays. In fact, in some respects it was essential: some parts of the text would have been impossible to translate without having seen the panels, for example, “Busca lo que empieza por ‘G’ y adivina lo que es”. ‘G’ turned out to be Gestión, and needed to be translated as ‘Integrated Management’, but this was impossible to work out without the accompanying photographs.

We designed various task sheets focusing on the problems posed by the hybrid nature of the text as a whole. Students were faced with the dilemma of whether or not to translate the names of the exhibition mascots, Chinijo (a kind of crab and also the name of a tiny uninhabited archipelago just north of the island of Lanzarote) and Menuda (a jellyfish). Both contain a play on words (they mean ‘small’) as well as an onomatopoeic effect, Chinijo – cangrejo; Menuda medusa:

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Para nuestro secreto descubrir, a jugar tendrás que venir “Soy un cangrejo moro chiquitijo y me llamo Chinito” “Yo soy Menuda, bajo el mar vivo. Más adelante estaré contigo There were also difficulties posed by the jokes, puzzles and rhymes presented by the mascots in the panels: La arena y el “callao” vienen del acantilado.

Las conchas y espinas duras Se transforman en grandes dunas.

(Pista del juego) ¿Qué parece que hace Chinijo para crear arena?

The text presented many challenges in the form of rhymes: La bruma marina en Canarias se llama maresía. ¿Que no te lo crees? ¡Pues no es fantasía! play on words: Las aguas abiertas: un hogar sin límites, mares de libertad en los que la vida se convierte en un largo viaje. scientific and technical vocabulary and explanations: Pejeverde: Popular pez de las costas de las islas, está presente en cualquier fondo rocoso.

Puertos: La actividad portuaria es básica en la economía de nuestras islas. Los puertos han impulsado el intercambio comercial con el resto del mundo. and poetic expression: El soplo del mar deja su huella en los seres que viven a las puertas del

océano.

The translation project gave rise to many interesting and useful experiences in the search for documentation and terminology, with students contacting organisations as diverse as local diving schools, the Faculty of Marine Science and the team directly involved in the Costa Viva project itself. During the course of the project, the teachers gradually withdrew from their habitual classroom management role, handing over organisational control to the students. However, they were always available for support and guidance, and on hand to resolve doubts and difficulties with

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language, especially collocation and grammar queries. Their role only became fundamental at the end of the translation process, when all three versions of the document were handed in and the final editing was carried out and the translation choices and decisions made. This was, in fact, a time-consuming and demanding task, but it was felt that the experience and satisfaction gained by the students more than compensated for this extra effort.

The greatest reward was to see the final publication of an A3 size reproduction of the exhibition panels, all translated into English and with the names of the students (109 of them!) who had worked on the project printed on the back cover. Each participant also received a Costa Viva certificate of collaboration, further evidence of the work experience they had gained over the three weeks the project lasted.

Any project of this nature which relinquishes control of the translation process whilst still forming part of a learning programme necessitates an alternative approach to assessment. Kiraly re-examines the role and nature of assessment in order for it to make a valuable contribution to the ‘translation project workshop’. Adapting ideas which he gave at a seminar at the ULPGC (Interactive Development of Translator competence: a seminar on Social Constructivism and Translator Education, October 2003), we designed a “Group and Self-Assessment Sheet” where students evaluated their individual performance and that of their fellow team-members. This was a new, and initially disorienting, task for the students, initiating a process of self-reflection and selfcriticism and also of positive recognition and esteem for the work they and their group members had carried out. Contrary to staff and student beliefs demonstrated during the ULPGC workshop, the students were extremely honest in their assessments, and the sheets were used as a contribution to the final mark awarded for the course. Some of the students’ comments on their own contribution to the project are reproduced below: “I was one of the terminology managers so I had to find the specific words and even sent a fax to a man of a diving academy.”

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“I was the documentation manager, but we worked as another member of the group in some moments, because we were a team and we had to help each other. I went to some restaurants to find the word claca and the differences between claca and lapa, and I asked people from Group 3 about this question”.

“We translated a text full of specific words and we had several problems with that. I looked up some of these words. Anyway, all the members in the group worked hard, with responsibility and like mature people. We had problems when we started to translate the text together.

However, we knew how to contact in the exact moment. It was an educative experience”.

“I looked for the vocabulary of the text and I found a lot of information in the internet that I carried out the project. I went to different libraries for this project”.

“I talked to the rest of the groups in order to have the same translation in some words.

Also, I controlled meetings and our tasks”.

“I went to Agaete village and I collected relevant information such as the terminology in Latin. As editor, I typed the translation according to the other groups”.

“We all contributed in this project with the translation. We are a good team of work and I’m very happy with that. I learned a lot of new things with that project”.

“The experience which we have in Agaete was great. And volunteers who were there explained us very well. It was useful”.

As a way of evaluating the usefulness the project as a whole and students’ perceptions of both working on it and the innovative assessment procedure, we designed an Evaluation Sheet where students could express their views on the experience. This was filled in anonymously and returned to the teachers in their pigeon-holes. The replies were extremely positive: “This project is very efficient [effective] because I’m working on a real translation; we take into account the time, the public who will read it, and so on. Furthermore, this helps me for my future work and professional degree”.

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“I enjoyed a lot doing this and it is the best idea in order to improve not only your language, but your knowledge of things”.

“I think this university should organise more projects as important as this one. It really gives us our first experience on something real”.

“I think that it was a very interesting project because it helps us to improve our English and know another subject like this. Perhaps the only problem was the researching of technical words, but this was the aim, wasn’t it?”

“I was not use to work as part of a group. Sometimes we didn’t agree to each other but at the end we divided the work among all of us and we succeeded”.

“I would like to do more projects in the future because I think it is a learning experience as a translator”.

“I would like to do, in the future, projects like this one. It’s the first work I’ve done, and I’m really happy with it”.

It was felt by all those involved in working on the project that it had been an enriching and fulfilling experience and well-worth the time and effort invested. The students’ motivation levels remained high throughout the translation process, driven by the combined circumstances of working for a real client, to a real dead-line, on a project that was inherently interesting and inspiring since it involved their own environment and reality, and the recognition that the text would be published and made available to a wide audience. The visual attractiveness and impact of the exhibition were an added incentive; it was a joy to be part of something that was so beautifully and professionally presented. As teachers, we have been highly motivated by the positive results to continue with this kind of authentic learning experience in our programme; we have since worked in collaboration with the Elder Museum of Science and Technology on their exhibition Einstein and Blas (2004/05), and again with the Costa Viva team (2005/06) on the translation into English of their web-site and a monographic publication Blanquizales about the devastation of the sea bed in the Canary Islands by the over-population of a species of sea urchin .

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REFERENCES BEEBY LONSDALE, A. (1996) Teaching Translation from Spanish to English. University of Ottawa Press CAMPBELL, S. (1998) Translation into the Second Language. Longman HATIM, B. (2001) Teaching and Researching Translation. Pearson Education Ltd. HATIM, B. and MASON, I. (1990) Discourse and the Translator Longman KIRALY, DON. (2000) A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education: Empowerment from Theory to Practice. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome Publishing McALISTER, G. (1992) Teaching Translation into a Foreign Language – Status, Scope and Aims (in Dollerup and Loddegaard eds.) Teaching Translation and Interpreting. Training, Talent and Experience John Benjamins: 291-8 http://www.canariasporunacostaviva.org/

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SELECTION OF THE EXHIBITION PANELS

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NEWSPEAK IN POLITICS: DIFFERENT EMPHASIS FOR DIFFERENT

CULTURES. A CASE IN SOME AMERICAN / SPANISH SPEECHES Concepción Hernández Guerra Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

ABSTRACT It seems quite redundant to talk about political language as language is used everywhere and is always political. That is, political language cannot simply be confined to the language of politicians. On the other hand, Fairclough admits that "Politics partly consist in the disputes and struggles which occur in language and over language" so language and politics are some concepts closely interrrelated. Actually, when somebody speaks to some people that person tries to fulfil two objectives: to attract their attention and to convince or persuade that what he/she says is true.

These are the same objectives in political texts.

Nevertheless, political discourse has certain features that characterize them.

Some of them would be: the vocabulary used (that is, the one related to politics, the importance of the pronouns "you" and "we", crucial words like freedom, liberty, God, human rights, equality, etc.), the liking to exaggerated adjectives, the repetition and combination of certain words and phrases, the concept of strategy applied to speeches and, in general, the idea that they express a compromise and make promises. Added to this, it has a controversial background and uses clichés and old formulations, it must own a particular tone and can have doublespeak.

Furthermore, there can exist other non-verbal features in these discourses as the unintentional pauses, the creation of silence and specific gestures. It is equally true that when uttering speeches the politician must have a powerful stage presence, charisma and a personal and attractive style.

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INTRODUCTION The aim of this paper is to make a contrast between President Bush's second inaugural address and Zapatero's only inaugural address. Both of them are the actual rulers of two quite different countries and, based on this, two aspects will be highlighted in this paper: how the different roles of both countries in the world are reflected and, secondly, how the opposing political parties and ideas they belong to (one, conservative and the other, progressive) are expressed, to conclude explaining how the theoretical characteristics expressed above can or cannot be applied in these examples.

ROLE OF SPAIN AND U.S.

IN THE WORLD

Let's see, firstly, the actual relations between both countries. To do this, we shall make a brief revision of last decade's politics in Spain and U.S. During his tenure as President, José María Aznar (People’s Party) sought strong diplomatic ties with the United States as a way of promoting stronger economic relations between the two countries and as a means to increase Spain’s profile in international relations. Aznar’s support went as far as to send Spanish troops to Iraq after the second Gulf war, ignoring opinion polls -shortly before the Madrid train bombing an opinion poll conducted by Spanish Real Instituto Elcano of international relations showed that around 80% of Spanish people opposed the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq-. (El Mundo, 2004) As a gesture of appreciation, the administration of George W. Bush gave Aznar the rare honor granted to foreign dignitaries of speaking before the U.S. Congress. In his address, Aznar restated that Spain and the United States constituted a community of values: "We want to occupy a position in the first line of defense of democracy and the rule of law alongside friends and allies, in good times as well as in times of difficulty. We share with you values and principles. And let me say that our commitment to freedom is unwavering."

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (Socialist Party) tried to distance himself from the United States and during his inauguration speech before the Spanish Congress we shall see that he only listed the United States as his fourth priority, behind Europe, Latin America and the Mediterranean: “…It is time to reach a consensus again… that should have never been lost. This consensus must

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make clear, in the following order, our commitment with Europe; must make Latin America and the Mediterranean our preferential centers of attention; and must maintain with the United States a relationship as a friend and partner, based on loyalty and mutual frankness…” However, he also stated that Spain’s foreign policy under his presidency would continue to rest on the promotion of the same values: “International law, reform and strengthening of international peace instruments, and must make development aid an integral part of our foreign policy”. (Rodríguez Zapatero, 2004: 14) He emphasized his commitment to a democratic Iraq, international peace and security, but only within the framework established by multilateral institutions, in particular the United Nations.

(Rodríguez Zapatero, 2004: 14-16) For the United States, the ability to link up with like-minded countries that pursue similar policies in Latin America, like Spain, for instance, can help Washington clean up its image from previous decades of intervention in which the United States put some of the Western liberal political values behind security concerns. The United States is right to side with the European Union in its promotion of good governance and respect for democracy and human rights in Latin America, for instance.

Becoming a member of the Western community was Spain's way of rising to international prominence. A close alliance with the United States, forged through cooperation in Latin America and in Europe, where Spain plays a more prominent role, may help Spain play a more prominent role in international politics.

In the following chapter we shall read an analysis of the discourses. The words written in italics are exact words reproduced from the original texts.

HOW THE POLITICAL PARTIES ARE EXPRESSED. FORMAL ANALYSIS OF THE DISCOURSES

In this chapter we shall analyse the extension, structure and general content of the discourses. The speech uttered by Bush lasted around 20 minutes (there are sources that state seventeen and others twenty-two) and the address uttered by Zapatero sixty-four minutes. This gives us some clues about the intention of everyone: the American wanted to give a general view of his next four years as president of the United States and the Spanish wanted to give an accurate

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explanation of the electoral program defended in previous weeks. The extension in pages is four for Bush and 27 for Zapatero although the printed characteristics are not the same.

The structure in the American example is as follows: Firstly, Bush addresses to several people (Vice President Cheney, Mr Chief Justice, President Carter, President Bush, President Clinton, reverend clergy, distinguished guests, fellow citizens) and follows a very formal introduction, quite ceremonial. In the Preface he states some facts about the history of the United States in which the word "freedom" opens and closes the idea ending with a religious reference.

This element will appear in four more occasions through the speech.

After this first introduction and reference to freedom (noun that with "liberty" will appear 41 times in the text) continues making a call to the world starting by Today America speaks ... expressing that America can change things. America can see oppressed people and they will be rewarded. To do this he quotes Abraham Lincoln with the words Those who deny freedom others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it and other personal sentences like when you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you; or start on this journey of progress and justice, and America will walk at your side.

After the call to the world he makes a call to the allies and to Americans to encourage soldiers in difficult countries. He ends with future goals for the country: freedom and standards of schools, ownership society, retirement savings and health insurance, but he just names them, does not deepen explaining how to get them. Next paragraph is to make reference to the different religions that cohabit in America but ends with a reference to the catholic religion expressing that is God's will that freedom wins the battle.

In a diagram we could state a summary of his intervention:

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Introduction

Addressee: 6 people + guests and citizens Very formal We celebrate the durable wisdom of our Constitution

Preface

History - freedom / communism / September 11th / evil / freedom Freedom for : America The rest of the world Global freedom = democracy

Main body:

America speaks: call to the world Call to the allies: Call to Americans:

Future goals:

reference to Lincoln Demagogy We depend on your help Patience Soldiers in foreign countries Youngsters: go the the Army

freedom standards of schools ownership society retirement savings health insurance

Ending paragraph: against racism God's will freedom + religious reference

The speech is not long but quite condensed. Firstly, as we can see, he reached out to allies, many of whom were sharply critical of the U.S. decision to invade Iraq; secondly, he pledged to make sweeping changes to improve education, health and the finances of Americans. For this and other reasons this is not a Conservative speech but could be considered Democrat or Liberal due to his idealism. Thirdly, although words such as Iraq, Afghanistan or Ukraine were not used once, it was clear which countries he was referring to. And with reference to this, not many will disagree with the expansion of freedom in all the world but again he does not name how to get it.

Focusing on Zapatero's speech he is shorter in the first sentences addressing listeners (Sr. Presidente, Sres. y Sras. Diputados) and dedicates seven pages for the introduction, before expressing the five main points in which he electoral campaign has been based. In these first sentences he dedicates some words to the voters and victims of the last terrorist attack and links it to the objective of ending with terrorism, expresses how to develop it and the need of a global

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coordination against it; he also dedicates a few words to other political groups as the opposition and trade unions and the need to give a role in the Parliament to the previous presidents of Spain.

The five main points named above are: renovation of public life, foreign policy, economic development, new social matters and development and extension of civil and political rights. He offers an exhaustive explanation of every compromise. He ends with a few words dedicated to culture naming Cervantes and, lastly, quotes his grandfather, a Republican soldier executed in the Spanish Civil War. The diagram of his speech could be summarized in the following diagram: Addressee Words for the voters and victims Objective 1

Sr. Presidente, Sres y Sras Diputados

Solicitar su confianza conforme a la propuesta realizada por el rey

against terrorism

- how to develop it -Global coordination against terrorism - against racism

Objective 2

need of collaboration between different groups: opposition, trade union, ...

Objective 3 Role of the previous Spanish Presidents 5 axis developed in the 1. Renovation of public life - Revitalizing the Parliament campaign - Reforms to the Congress, ...

- Succession to the throne - Official naming of the Spanish Communities - European Constitution 2. Foreign Policy 3. Economic development 4. Social Politics

- Loyaty and frankness with the United States of America - International terrorism - Education - I+D - Social dialogue - Homes

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- Minimum salary

Conclusion

5. Development and extension - women's rights of civil and politic rights - freedom of sexual option - immigration Culture Reference to Cervantes and words written by his grandfather: un ansia infinita de paz, el amor al bien y el mejoramiento social de los humildes

As we have seen, the socialist electoral program constituted the basis of his words and a main idea is remarked over the rest, the searching of dialogue.

APPLICATION OF THEORETICAL CHARACTERISTICS Bush’s speech is mainly centred on foreign policy and the need of preservation of freedom and peace. Even though four years had passed since the bombing attack in the World Trade Centre a lot of references to this happening invade his speech. For this the sentences, in many cases, are quite demagogic but sound nicely. So, we have sentences like We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul.

The vocabulary used can be grouped in two contrasted parts: positive and negative concepts. So, we have words like quiet and repose that contrast in the same line with day of fire, to emulate the September 11th bombing attack. Others like resentment, tyranny, ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder, violence, destructive power, mortal threat, hatred, resentment, tyrants, ‌ all of them appearing in the same paragraph to talk about the enemies, contrasting in the following paragraph with reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, face of human freedom , peace to talk about themselves. This vocabulary is in several occasions inserted in sentences using repetition and the combination of certain structures. In this way, we have find their own voice, attain their own freedom, make their own way or establishing again contrast: life is fragile, evil is real.

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The use of the pronouns is also interesting. Most of the cases he used the pronoun "we" to talk about the feelings and needs of America. America is also synonym of idealism, courage, single heart, preceded by the sentence America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. But he clarifies it from the very beginning when he says our duties are defined not by the words I use, but the history we have seen together. So he links Americans’ moral and unavoidable responsibility for the fact of having suffered together a terrible terrorist attack.

Zapatero’s speech has also a lot of references to the terrorist attack on March 11 th in Madrid as it happened only two days before the elections and is stated by the opposition that this was the reason why the socialists won those elections. Actually, the polls recognised that the favourite a few days before was the People's Party. As this discourse describes the measures that the new government are taking for the improvement of the country the message is positive and, consequently, the vocabulary and ideas too.

The most repeated word is diálogo and consenso; others like entendimiento, encuentro, respeto, pluralismo, tolerancia y transparencia are quite common in this discourse. The only negative words he utters in all the speech happen when he refers to the terrorism: terror, muerte, chantaje. There is a paragraph too in which he uses several resources. That is (p.2) El elemento esencial de la lucha contra el terrorismo es la unidad de los demócratas; una unidad que se rompe cuando se trata de sacar rentabilidad política del terrorismo; que se rompe también cuando falta una solidaridad incondicional con las víctimas, cuando se contemporiza con los violentos, cuando se olvida que nadie es libre si no somos todos libres.

As we can check there is a link between the words repeated composing a kind of chain among them. The repetition is also used in other examples, but no so often as in the case of Bush.

Sociedad más segura, sociedad más libre; […] Igualdad entre mujeres y hombres; igualdad en el empleo, igualdad en las condiciones de trabajo, igualdad en la atribución de las cargas familiares, igualdad también en la participación en el poder. The frequency of positive words does not avoid the use of exaggeration and demagogy too. That is the case of pido el concurso de todos y la

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voluntad de todos (opposition can not support the main government, as all of us know) or the objective of sociedad moderna, abierta, culta y mayor preparada.

CONCLUSIONS Bush has talked to the world not just to Americans and he has tried to utter a speech that will last for many years, with grandiloquent words and sentences, quite utopian in many cases. He is aware that his discourse will be repeated and heard and commented by many people around the Globe during many weeks and he has prepared it for this.

Zapatero, on the contrary, do not have these premises. His discourse has been quite practical, he has explained to the Spanish what he wants to get in the following four years and gives clues about how to get it. Taking apart the first few sentences and the last ones, that are quite formal, he didn't make any literary reference –omitting his grandfather's letter and Cervantes'neither he tries to make an impressive speech. His reforms are quite progressive and a bit utopian too in many cases. He has risked quite a lot with the measures as Spaniards have a source in four years to check how much he has got or not. Globally, he has talked to the Spanish people and his reference to Europe and the rest of the world is quite cautious.

To end with, I would like to state that this is a good exercise in a discourse analysis class, for instance, to check the different cultural features of both countries through their leaders and the role of every country in the world. Students could deepen in the text if in a second stage lexical cohesion is studied.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Chilton, P. 2004. Analysing Political Discourse London: Routledge Fairclough, N. 1990. Language and Power London: Longman http://www.reei.org/reei9/P.Toral(reei9).pdf http://www.la-moncloa.es/NR/rdonlyres/3325083C-0840-49BA-9CE1 D3EA68 DF0 BDE/32018/DISCURSODEINVESTIDURA.pdf#search=%22discurso%20jose%20luis%20rodriguez %20zapatero%20en%20el%20acto%20de%20investidura%20como%20presidente%20de%20esp a%C3%B1a%22 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4460172 http://www.cidob.org/bios/castellano/lideres/r-045.htm El Mundo 2004. "El 80% de los españoles rechaza la permanencia de las tropas en Irak en las condiciones actuales”, http://www.elmundo.es Jawitz, W. 1997. Understanding Mass Media Illinois: National Textbook Company Onuf, N. 1989. World of Our Making Columbia: South Carolina Press

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TEACHING ENGLISH EFFECTIVELY USING ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEXTS Beverly J. Hearn University of Tennessee at Martin Peggy F. Hopper Mississippi State University

ABSTRACT English Language Learners use the same or similar cognitive processes as native speakers of English, but they typically use fewer reading strategies. ELLs can benefit from learning the same reading strategies that are described in the reading literature for native speakers of English. Reading strategies which prepare the ELL to read and assist comprehension will insure that students learn from English language text effectively. After reading, the teacher must plan strategies that engage ELLs in using, applying, and extending the information previously read in English. Teaching effective strategies to use before, during, and after reading English language texts will insure that ELLs comprehend the text and, in the process, they will learn English.

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How do English language learners best learn to read? How do their teachers help them bridge the gap from understanding and speaking English to reading comprehension? Do ELLs need the same reading strategies as native English speakers or do ESL teachers need to use different reading strategies? With the current emphasis on accountability in education and the current public pressure on educators to make rapid progress with English language learners, these are some pertinent questions for ELL teachers at all levels. A review of the research on English language learners’ reading processes (Fitzgerald, 1995) included an overview of seventeen reports comparing ESL readers’ processes to those of native speakers. This report provides some direction for those who teach reading to English language learners. Fitzgerald concluded that many aspects of the reading process appeared similar in both English language learners and native speakers of English. The major differences in ELL readers and native English readers seemed to be quantitative: ELLs used fewer reading strategies less frequently. However, the cognitive processes used by English language learners and native language readers seemed to be quite similar. The meta-study also found several characteristics the more proficient ELL readers had in common. Among other factors, the more proficient readers used prior knowledge, recognized the meaning of text, and used a greater variety of strategies more frequently than less proficient ELL readers. Because both ELL and native language readers use similar cognitive processes when they read, similar reading strategies should be effective for both populations as they approach English language texts. This paper proposes the use of pre, during and post strategies from the reading literature for use with English language learners.

Activation of schema and prior knowledge is one of the most beneficial strategies that ELL teachers can engage in before reading to increase comprehension (Murtagh, 1987). Prior knowledge can be activated in many ways: by previewing vocabulary, correcting commonly held myths, making predictions, and by assessing what is already known about a topic. If preparation by determining and building background knowledge is neglected, ELLs may have trouble setting a purpose for reading, they may have difficulty distinguishing important and subordinate ideas, and they may have difficulty asking questions. By engaging in strategies which develop background knowledge before reading a text, ESL teachers can find how much background knowledge

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students have on the topic at hand and as that information is shared by the group, build background knowledge. The more students know about a subject, the more interesting it becomes.

As a result, the use of background building strategies motivates students to read and learn from English language texts.

Possible sentences is a pre-reading strategy which combines vocabulary development and prediction (Moore & Arthur, 1981). This strategy focuses on five to eight new and/or familiar words that the student will encounter in the upcoming reading selection. Before reading, and without searching in the dictionary for the meanings of the words, students create possible sentences by making guesses and using the new word in a sentence. As these vocabulary statements are shared, students not only predict the new vocabulary meanings, but they simultaneously access their own prior knowledge for use as they read the text. An added benefit is that curiosity about the possible sentences motivates students to read the text and discover the actual meaning. As they read, the students use the text’s context clues to verify whether their possible sentences are accurate. After reading, the teacher asks for new sentences in which the words are to be used correctly, and those that are acceptable are recorded in their vocabulary notebooks. These new sentences demonstrate comprehension, extend the use of the text’s concepts, and allow for a form of personal response to the text. Many aspects of literacy are used in the possible sentences strategy: prediction, writing skills, speaking skills for discussion, evaluative thinking, and comprehension monitoring as meanings are corrected. As English language learners move through the process of creating, evaluating and correcting possible sentences, their teachers can determine their degree of background knowledge, and the students can learn from each other as they discuss, share, and build background together.

Another pre-reading strategy, cubing (Cowan & Cowan, 1980) was originally developed as a thinking strategy to help authors overcome writer’s block. However, cubing can also be used to determine and build background. Before reading, cubing causes English language learners to activate schema as they think in depth about what they know about the topic of the text at hand.

After reading, cubing can be used to consolidate knowledge, discuss and review, and summarize what has been learned either orally or in written form. The teacher must prepare the cube in

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advance. A cardboard cube or box is covered with six labels: Describe it; Compare it; Associate it; Analyze it; Apply it; and Argue for or against it. Before reading the text, the students use the cube to discuss the topic at the six levels. (Note that the levels represent six levels of thinking.) As a variation, instead of discussing the topic, students may write about each aspect of the topic for a limited period of time (3-5 minutes); after writing they share information with the class or in groups.

Cubing helps students delve deeper into their background knowledge than might be possible with simple K-W-L charts or brainstorming, and it also provides a good foundation for purposeful discussion and works as a pre-writing strategy. Speaking, elaboration, and writing are developed with the cubing strategy.

A third pre-reading strategy that builds schema and motivates ELLs to read is the anticipation guide. Anticipation guides build background knowledge before reading by presenting a small number of statements related to the text. (The statements may be correct or incorrect.) The reader must decide if he agrees or disagrees with them. Anticipation guides, also called prediction guides or reaction guides, are well-adapted to topics that may be controversial, or topics about which there are commonly held misconceptions, such as “AIDS may be spread by kissing.� To create an anticipation guide, the teacher will write three to six statements about the basic concepts of the reading, choosing ideas which will stimulate student prior knowledge and stir discussion.

Students must read the statements and answer whether they agree or disagree before reading the text itself. Students then discuss their answers, telling why they hold their particular opinion rather than just stating yes or no. The discussion builds background, motivates students to read, and gives ELLs a voice. After reading, students get a chance to change their answers in discussion groups. In the final discussion, the teacher brings closure and corrects any misconceptions that may still exist. The formal use of the anticipation guide should be extended informally as the student is guided to use prediction as a pre-reading strategy for all texts. Anticipation guides are excellent tools for English language learners as they promote critical thinking and cross-cultural understanding (Conley, 1985). By using pre-reading strategies such as anticipation guides, cubing, and possible sentences ELLs practice the metacognitive strategies such as prediction; they activate prior knowledge and access schema; and ELLs are more motivated to read English texts

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because the pre-reading strategies have aroused their curiosity as well as made texts more accessible.

Students are motivated to read by pre-reading strategies, but they still may need reading strategies which are designed to assist comprehension during the reading itself. Often teachers are guilty of simply testing reading comprehension rather than helping ELLs develop strategies to understand and remember what they have read. Assistance strategies help students construct meaning based on what they already know, and encourage them to organize and prioritize ideas.

Three during reading strategies that help students comprehend are the guided reading procedure, question/answer relationship, and marginal glosses.

Re-reading is one of the simplest and most obvious reading strategies that good readers use when they don’t understand. The guided reading procedure provides a structure which teaches ELLs to use the strategy of re-reading. The guided reading procedure (Manzo, 1975), models re-reading and helps students to accurately reconstruct the gist of the text. It is an intense, close, and structured reading procedure and should be used only occasionally and for important texts. Before starting GRP, the teacher should select a text that takes from five to ten minutes for ELLs to read. First, build background by determining what students already know about the subject, and set a purpose for reading. Then direct the students to “Read and remember all they can.� After reading, have students to share what they remember and record all information on the board. Ask students for further facts that might be important and to note any facts that may be inconsistent or incorrect. Redirect the students to the text to prove or disprove the information which has been recorded. After the second reading, add new information, prioritize, and sequence the recorded notes. Questions, quiz, or a written summary may be used afterwards to reinforce what was learned. Using GRP helps students rehearse the strategy of re-reading so that they can use this strategy independently to assist comprehension.

Not only do ESL teachers want students to understand the literal facts, but they also want their students to be able to understand the implications and applications of what they have understood from the texts they have read. The question answer relationship or QAR (Raphael, 1986) is one way to organize questioning and make sure that literal, inferential, and applied

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learning levels have been attained. The QAR strategy makes it clear to ELLs that they must read both “between” and “beyond” the lines. The teacher first models the QAR levels, and when the levels are understood, allows students to take over the development of questions. Level one is “Right there!” or literal comprehension; the students can point to the answer directly in the text.

Level two is “Think and search!” The answer is in the text, but the exact words are not used; the student must think about what the author is saying and state it in his own words. Level three QAR is called “You and the author!” The student must use his own knowledge plus what he read in the text to draw a conclusion. QAR level four is an application question: “On your own!” The student must figure out the answer for himself. The best way to introduce QAR is by writing sample questions at each level on a text the students have read together. Then allow students to start to make the QAR questions themselves. QAR uses listening, speaking, reading, and writing, as well as strengthens comprehension more than some other questioning techniques (Jenkins & Lawler, 1990).

English language learners sometimes wish their teachers were right beside them as they read a text—ready to answer any and every question. The marginal gloss reading strategy serves this purpose. In a marginal gloss, the teacher assists the comprehension of difficult texts during reading by creating a set of directions, or marginal gloss, for the student to follow and respond to at the same time as he or she reads. Singer and Donlan (1985) direct the teacher to create the marginal gloss by folding a piece of paper the same size as the text page in half, creating a column for teacher comments or questions and one for student answers. Create one sheet for each page of the text to be read, and write the explanations, directions for reading, or questions on one side of the paper at the same position in the text where the information is to be found. Students answer the questions as they read the lines of text. The gloss notes on the adjacent page make it seem as if the teacher himself were pointing out what is important as they read. Marginal glosses are best for initial strategy instruction for ELLs. They help them prioritize what is important in a text. The use of these typical reading strategies for native speakers and readers such as re-reading, questioning, and marginal glosses will assist English language learners to comprehend texts and teach them strategies for their own autonomous use at the same time.

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Reading strategies which offer English language learners an opportunity to reflect, remember, and clarify what they have learned are used after reading. After reading, good readers will think critically about what they have learned and this will help them to retell and retain the material. English language learners can become more autonomous learners when they use strategies for reflection and extension after reading.

Learning logs (Newkirk, 1986) provide insight for the teacher on how the students are synthesizing their learning, but also they help the students to make connections to what they already know and help them to become more consciously aware of their own learning strategies.

They can be open ended or the teacher can provide guiding questions to cue the students’ response and provide an opportunity for a student to reveal his problems or concern. Students may write in their own languages. Learning Logs are regular, short, ungraded, and unedited, and they promote genuine consideration of what has been learned. Nothing nurtures academic growth better than periodic self-evaluation.

GIST statements help students to focus on the main idea and to summarize a passage.

GIST stands for Generating Interactions between Schemata and Text (Cunningham, 1982). Using this strategy will help students check their understanding and prepare for writing essays and exams. In order to teach students the GIST strategy, after reading a short paragraph, the class works together to write a summary of the contents of only the first sentence in fifteen words or less.

The second sentence is read and students summarize the first two sentences in fifteen words or less. Continue until the paragraph is read, each time asking students to write a summary of the group of sentences in fifteen words or less. Finally they will have written a summary of the entire paragraph in fifteen words or less. After learning the procedure, it can be applied to any story, chapter, or article. Through this strategy, ELLs learn to summarize and pick out the main idea, and as they rehash the text several times, retention of the text information is increased.

A third post reading strategy for ELLs is the ranking ladder. This strategy is well suited for beginning ELL readers. Using graphic representations helps students store knowledge as images as well as in language. The ranking ladder helps learners prioritize concepts in order of importance. After reading, as a review, choose a series of concepts with the students. Draw a

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ladder and label the top rung “Most Important” and the bottom rung “Least Important.” Discuss the order in which to rank the items and have the students explain why they think the ranking is more or less important. This is an easy way to have students move up to the evaluative level of thinking and extends the use of the concepts which have been learned, and the longer a concept is used, the more likely it is to be remembered.

Native speakers of English and English language learners use similar cognitive processes when learning to read. Those ELLs who are more proficient readers of English use more reading strategies, and they use them more frequently. This paper has proposed some reading strategies for application to the ELL population. Pre reading strategies activate prior knowledge and schema as well as motivate the reader; strategies for use during reading are designed to enhance comprehension; and post reading strategies offer an opportunity for reflection, response, and enhanced retention. It is hoped that these strategies from the literature of reading can be taught by ESL teachers to the ELL population with positive results.

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LISTENING TO TEACHERS’ VOICES ON PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES Nelly Paulina Trejo Guzmán Centro de Lenguas y Lingüística Aplicada Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas – Universidad de Exeter

ABSTRACT The professional development (PD) of language teachers plays a pivotal role in the improvement of teaching-learning processes and educational institutions. Mexico’s National Programme for the Improvement of Higher Education Teaching Staff (PROMEP), the National Education Programme, and State Education Development Plans hold similar ideas. Language centres that are part of state universities have therefore encouraged the professional development of their teaching faculties. This presentation reports the results of a study on professional development carried out at the North-East Language Centre in Mexico1. The researcher will outline the impact that the Centre’s particular approach to professional development has on the faculty’s preferences, beliefs and professional identities.

INTRODUCTION In the first issue of the Teacher Development Newsletter, Bolitho (1986, cited in Head and Taylor, 1997) argues that while initial and in-service training are frequently supported, it is not the case with teacher development, which is often overlooked. Despite the fact that Bolitho’s article was published twenty years ago, the situation he describes is still an unfortunate reality in many teaching contexts. This is why I consider language teacher development an area of particular interest, since I believe that teachers, if given the opportunity, are capable of turning their work life into a journey of continuous growth.

1 The name of the centre is a pseudonym

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LANGUAGE TEACHER TRAINING,

EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT

The close interrelationship that exists among language teacher training, education and development is evident in the language teacher education literature. Training is sometimes understood as a prescriptive ‘top-down’ practice where correct or desirable modes of teaching a foreign language are demonstrated for further implementation (Richards, 1997; Widdowson, 1983).

Teacher education on the other hand, is conceived as not only presenting trainees with correct or desirable modes of teaching but also seeking to develop a deep understanding of the principles that underlie them.

Finally, what most PD definitions have in common is that it entails a continuous growth, which is mainly beneficial for the practitioner (Langue, 1990; Edge, 1992; Head and Taylor, 1997; Edge, 2002). The difference lies in the ‘methods’ suggested for development. Teachers can develop through responding to the inner desire that motivates them to learn, through cooperation with colleagues and activities such as action research and reflective practice. Figure 1 illustrates the way PD is interpreted in this piece of work. This is as the result of training, educational, and developmental experiences.

Figure 1 Interrelationship between training, education, and development

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APPROACHES TO PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT The framework for the following approaches to PD is based on accounts made in mainstream education and ELT literature. However, it is not based on a chronological account since, while the mainstream education literature appears to have a chronological change, this is not the case with ELT literature, in which the three different approaches still appear in recent publications.

TRADITIONAL VIEW OF PD Traditional views of PD perceived the teacher as the only person responsible for their PD. This view poses several advantages. It is closely linked to personal development and it encourages teachers to reflect critically and autonomously about their practice. It also allows teachers to base their PD on the personal authenticity for each decision. However, this view of PD conceives teachers as isolated entities. This often leads to a situation of disempowerment where teachers do not have access to innovative ideas and better solutions for their everyday problems from their colleagues. While some of the faculty members are able to develop professionally others experience feelings of burnout, confusion, and frustration. Consequently, the educational institution is often forgotten and remains in stagnation.

INSTITUTIONAL PD Institutional PD aims at providing teachers with opportunities to participate in a broad range of activities that would assist them in the enhancement of their professional practice. It is mainly encouraged by educational managers or persons with higher authority. Institutional PD may produce observable changes in a relatively short period of time. However, this type of PD also holds several disadvantages. It is a top-down approach in which something is done to the teachers rather than with them, frequently just to improve technical skills (Fullan and Hargreaves, 1992; Day, 1999; Craft, 2000). Thus it may underestimate and under-utilise both the knowledge and expertise of older faculty members and the idealism and energy of new teachers. This imposition of PD activities might lead to superficial cosmetic changes, which do not bring long-term benefits either for the teachers or for the institution (Myers and Clark, 2000).

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TEACHER-LED PD Craft (2000) and Day (1999) claim that both the individualistic focus of PD and institutional PD are no longer appropriate models for professional development for three main reasons. Firstly, teachers should receive support for developing as professionals and their efforts to develop should be valued. Secondly, teachers must be actively engaged in their own professional development. In order to achieve this, their personal and professional identities, beliefs, and preferences must be taken into consideration and valued. Finally, the institution and the teaching faculty should be able to and must find a balance between individual and institutional development needs.

Since teacher-led PD experiences arise from the teachers’ interests, faculty members are more likely to be committed to them and the changes that emerge are deep and long lasting.

Kohonen (2002) reminds us that it is essential to bear in mind that PD not only implies intellectual but also emotional involvement. This is why time and opportunities must be allowed so that the idea of PD as something personally valuable evolves in teachers (Fullan and Hargreaves, 1992).

Ashdown claims (2002: 128) that it is the people in authority’s duty to develop ‘an ethically sound approach to professional development’ which builds trust at the same time that it provides a range of development options from where the teacher can choose. In this way, the PD benefits

are

for

both

the

teachers and the institution. This is illustrated in Figure 5 where the ‘layers’ of influence of PD are extended.

Figure 2 Extended influence of PD

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METHODOLOGY The present study was conducted at a language centre which is part of a public higher education institution in Mexico. A total of thirty-seven faculty members participated in the present study, which was 93% of the total research population at the time when the study was conducted.

Data was collected through questionnaires and e-mail interviews. The questionnaire enabled the researcher to have access to an overview of the phenomena being investigated. Through the email interviews participants were allowed to express their views, feelings and perspectives. This methodological triangulation contributed to the provision of both robust data and reliable findings.

FINDINGS The data gathered in this study appear to suggest that the current approach to PD in the North-East Language Centre is very similar to the institutional PD described above. This is the case with activities such as the ICELT (In-service Certificate for English Language Teaching) and peer observation, which are compulsory for all the teaching staff at the institution.

In contrast to the negative consequences that Craft (2000) claims may emerge in these situations such as low levels of morale and difficulties in recruitment and retention of staff, the centre’s faculty showed a very positive attitude towards these activities. Most of the teachers surveyed thought these activities were very effective and even expressed their wish for more activities of this kind to take place.

Respondent 25: PD activities have been very effective, I’ve learned a lot and now I feel my classes include a variety of activities.

Respondent 17: With these activities (PD) I think I have improved my teaching techniques and I have learned about different aspects of second language acquisition.

Respondent 29: I have been provided with up-to-date knowledge about ELT, learned teaching techniques, etc. Because of these training courses I have been able to improve my teaching.

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It was clear from the outcomes of the survey that there are a variety of PD opportunities available at the CELLAP, as shown in graphic 1.

100

Teaching w orkshops In-service certifications Postgraduate studies

75

80 60

47.2 41.6

TD groups

38.8

40

Residence in TL countries Not familiar yet

20 0

5.5

0

Graphic 1 PD opportunities available at the North-East Language Centre

The diversity in the range of comments when it comes to evaluating PD opportunities is evidence of the importance of continuous communication between the management and the teaching faculty. It was observed that while most of the faculty members could easily start their PD journey with the resources available, others seem to need help, guidance and motivation to initiate their own journey as the following comments show: Respondent 28: I think that the centre has offered sufficient opportunities for PD, some teachers do not attend them arguing that they are very busy.

Respondent 33: I believe the centre has been motivating more and more PD opportunities‌ resources such as books, research articles, and journals can be used by its personnel. In addition, the centre allows research to be done with its students. The opportunities the centre offers are excellent. It depends on each teacher to develop on their own with the tools offered by the centre.

Respondent 10: There are very few or none PD opportunities (except for the ICELT)‌ we are not asked what our goals and dreams are‌ I think the opportunities must be offered to all the teachers. We could have meetings in which everybody expressed their opinion freely bearing in

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mind that we have to make proposals to improve our work and methodology. Then we should discuss the proposals and come to an agreement to make them work.

A striking finding was the strong association that the participants made between PD and teaching skills improvement. Very few of them considered PD as something related to conducting research or as a personally beneficial process. Only three participants stated that PD could bring personal benefits to language teacher’s lives. The following are some of their comments: Respondent 37: PD sharpens identity, helps define values, and increases confidence.

Respondent 31: When you develop professionally you develop personally too.

Respondent 28: PD has also benefited me as a human being. Being involved in different PD activities has provided me with general knowledge. This has enabled me to share and support my children and family. Above all, getting myself more prepared has made me feel better and happier with myself.

This belief may be due to the type of PD activities that the centre’s faculty have experienced. Most of these activities consist of teaching workshops, certificates, or diplomas where new teaching techniques and methods are taught.

The data indicates that while some of the centre’s faculty are aware of the benefits of collaborative work and research, others seem reluctant to experience these activities. Some of the interviewees’ comments show that once they experience things such as collaborative work or conducting research, the fear of failing is lessened and replaced by rewarding feelings about themselves and their profession. This may indicate that if trust is carefully built by listening to the faculty and respecting their ideas, they may be motivated to work collaboratively and to initiate research projects.

Respondent 33: I have recently begun to do research in the classroom as part of my dissertation for my BA, and as part of a research article I published in a Mexican journal… now that I do it (research) I understand many things about teaching methodologies, techniques and

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students’ needs… research has allowed me to grow professionally, to increase my level of English and my ability to write.

Respondent 9: I think that collaborative work not only helps an individual but the whole group of teachers working as colleagues in a specific teaching environment.

Respondent 28: Collaborative work enables, supports, and enhances language teaching as well as my life as a language teacher.

CONCLUSION The institutional approach to PD that is currently being promoted at the North-East Language Centre has heightened the faculty’s willingness to develop professionally through inservice teaching qualifications and workshops. It became clear that the North-East Language Centre has already started the PD journey and is creating a development path by walking it.

However, this situation may not be so positive in the long run. Myers and Clark (2000) warn that an institutional approach to PD may lead to superficial cosmetic changes which may be detrimental for the development of the teachers and the institution. Cosmetic changes of this kind seem to be described by some faculty members when they claim their classroom techniques have improved as a consequence of PD activities. While the improvement of classroom techniques is not a negative sign, this in the long run may not suffice for the development of student-learning and the institution.

Senior and new faculty members should be provided with the opportunity to experiment with unfamiliar PD activities such as teacher development groups or action research. If the centre’s decision makers promote a broader range of PD activities, the faculty might discover the benefits these bring to their professional lives. Such benefits include a feeling of satisfaction with the results, a renewed motivation to continue improving as a professional, and a sense of belonging to the profession and the institution. This is likely to happen since some of the participants’ comments showed that, after taking the risk of experiencing a new PD activity, they felt pleased with the results.

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The former suggestion raises the issue of the role of school leaders in the encouragement of PD. If a broader range of PD activities is to be promoted, it is essential for the teaching faculty to feel reassured with support from coordinators and fellow colleagues. An ethically sound approach to PD that builds a sense of collegiality and recognises the faculty’s efforts to develop is essential for any institution. As a result, faculty members may feel free to express their ideas and sufficiently confident to continue to pursue their PD. Moreover, this may also help to determine the extent to which the individual teachers’ goals are compatible with those of the institution in an attempt to pursue a shared commitment towards PD. In this way, it is likely that teachers will feel that they play an important role in determining the North-East Language Centre’s goals, since they will perceive that their expertise and energy are valued.

Finally, the North-East Language Centre’s teachers reported two main reasons for considering the PD activities promoted very effective. One was the improvement of their teaching skills and the second was the improvement they perceived of their students’ learning. If PD is considered a lifelong journey, I believe it is always a good idea to find out if one is walking along the right path. This is why further research is needed in order to determine the impact that the current approach to PD is having on teaching and student learning. If the centre’s faculty members are encouraged to carry out this kind of research in it will facilitate not only their development but also that of the institution itself. Furthermore, the outcomes of this research may prove useful to discovering which new courses of action are needed.

It must be recognised, however, that firm conclusions or broader generalisations cannot be made from this study. The research could have benefited from taking into consideration the administrators and decision makers’ opinions on the same issues. Moreover, a longitudinal investigation might have provided richer and more reliable data, had time and resources made this possible.

The findings in the present study have proved to be personally illuminating in three main ways. Firstly, they have facilitated my understanding of the effect that the North-East Language Centre’s leaders’ efforts to promote PD are having on faculty members. Secondly, the findings have proved useful in providing a clearer picture of the centre’s faculty’s beliefs and interests for

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PD. Finally, they have enabled me to realise that the product of research allows professionals to gain valuable knowledge about issues that are important in their teaching contexts.

REFERENCES Asdown, J. (2002) ‘Professional development as “interference”? Insights from the Teaching Recovery in-service course. In: Sugrue, C. and Day, C. (eds.) Developing Teachers and Teaching Practice: International Research Perspectives. London: Routledge Falmer. 116-129.

Bolitho, R. (1986) ‘Teacher development- a personal perspective.’ Teacher Development Newsletter, No. 1, p. 2.

Craft, A. (2000) Continuing Professional Development. London: Routledge Falmer.

Day, C. (1999) Developing Teachers: The challenges of lifelong learning. London. Falmer Press.

Edge, J. (ed.) (2002) Continuing Professional Development: Some of Our Perspectives. Great Britain: Information Press.

Edge, J. (1992) Cooperative Development: Professional Self-Development through Cooperation with Colleagues.

Essex: Longman.

Fullan, M. and Hargreaves, A. (1992) What’s Worth Fighting for in Your School? Working Together for Improvement.

Great Britain: Open University Press.

Hargreaves, A. (2002) ‘ Teaching in a box: emotional geographies of teaching.’ In: Sugrue, C. and Day, C. (eds.)

Developing Teachers and Teaching Practice: International Research Perspectives. London: Routledge Falmer.3-25 Head, K. and Taylor, P. (1997) Readings in Teacher Development. Great Britain: Heinemann.

Kohonen, V. (2002) ‘From isolation to interdependence in ELT: Supporting teacher development through a schooluniversity partnership.’ In: Edge, J. (ed.) Continuing Professional Development: Some of Our Perspectives.

Great Britain: Information Press.

Langue, D. (1990) ‘A blueprint for teacher development.’ In: Richards, J. and Nunan, D. (eds.) Second Language Teacher Education. New York: Cambridge University Press. 245-268.

Myers, M. and Clark, S. (2002) “CPD, lifelong learning and going meta.” In: Edge, J. (ed.) (2002) Continuing Professional Development: Some of Our Perspectives. Great Britain: Information Press. 50-62.

Richards, J. (1997) Beyond Training. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Widdowson, H. (1983) Learning Purpose and Language Use. London: Oxford University Press.

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FACILITATING THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY Nancy Killick & Wendy Kipnis Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC, Canada ABSTRACT Language students and their teachers recognize the need for students to expand their vocabulary so that they can express themselves more easily and accurately. However, it is important that students be exposed to vocabulary which is useful for their needs, and, in addition, they must be given information on word usage – how to use these vocabulary items as naturally as possible. Word lists are a source of useful vocabulary, and learner’s dictionaries are an invaluable source of information, including easy-to-understand definitions, and information on usage and grammar. It is also important that students be exposed to new vocabulary repeatedly through various exercises and activities to help them remember the meanings of the words and learn how they are used, so the article ends with several suggestions for activities that can be used at various levels and in classes teaching different language skills.

INTRODUCTION A constant complaint heard by teachers of English as a Second Language from their students is that the students feel they do not have adequate vocabulary to allow them to express what they wish to express. In addition, ESL teachers are painfully aware that students often use certain vocabulary items quite unnaturally. The students may feel that they “know” a word or phrase, but, in fact, they do not use it as a native English speaker would use it. Therefore, when teaching vocabulary, we must try to do two things: expand the number of vocabulary items the students know but also give students information on usage, that is, information on how these words and phrases would actually be used by a native English speaker.

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The first thing we need to consider is what it means to “know” a word. When we talk about ‘knowing’ a word, we are actually talking about a variety of levels of knowledge about that word: 0.- The person has perhaps never seen or heard the word before and has no idea of its meaning.

1.- The person has seen or heard the word before and perhaps has a vague idea of its meaning.

2.- The person can understand the meaning of the word but cannot explain it clearly or use the word.

3.- The person can understand the meaning and can explain it but still is not sure exactly in what situations the word can be used.

4.- The person understands in exactly which kinds of situations the word can be used. It is this highest level of knowledge about a word, called active or productive knowledge (as compared to passive or receptive knowledge), which teachers should try to help their students ultimately gain.

WHAT VOCABULARY SHOULD BE TAUGHT? Vocabulary can be deliberately taught, which is known as direct teaching, or students can learn words incidentally when their attention is focused on the meaning of the message rather than the meanings of the individual words. This is called indirect or incidental teaching/learning.

Whether language students are learning vocabulary directly or indirectly, there are some points their teachers should consider when choosing what vocabulary items to expose their students to.

Of course, the choice of vocabulary items will depend on the students’ needs, but, no matter what their specific needs may be, they should be exposed to useful vocabulary items. This seems too obvious to be stated; however, the writers have encountered many examples of English language students being exposed, either directly or indirectly, to vocabulary which is far from useful, perhaps uncommon or even archaic vocabulary items which students will rarely encounter while not knowing very useful words and phrases such as paperback, dime, and run out of.

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One way to measure the usefulness of a word is by its frequency: how often a student might encounter the word. Another consideration in choosing words to teach is range: whether the student might encounter the word mainly in one area, such as in business textbooks, or much more widely, in such places as academic textbooks of various disciplines, but also in newspapers, fiction, TV dramas, and in the grocery store. Vocabulary items which occur with high frequency and over a broad range of situations are generally considered more useful.

One source of such words is word lists. These are lists of words which have been compiled by taking both frequency and range into consideration. One such word list is the General Service Word List, which was compiled in 1953 by Michael West and contains the 2,000 most frequently occurring and therefore most useful words for English language students to learn.

Although created over fifty years ago, it is still considered the best list of general vocabulary and an essential basis for English vocabulary acquisition (Nation and Waring, pg. 13). West and his colleagues also produced scores of simplified readers based on this vocabulary (ibid, pg. 14), giving students the opportunity to see these commonly used words used in context. Specialized word lists also exist such as lists of words that are frequently used in academic textbooks. One such list is the University Word List (Xue and Nation, 1984), which lists 836 words that frequently occur in textbooks across a wide range of disciplines. Another list of words used in academic textbooks is the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 1998), which lists 570 words occurring in textbooks in four faculties: Arts, Commerce, Law, and Sciences.

No matter how a teacher chooses the vocabulary items for his/her students to learn, once the words have been chosen, the students must then practice using these words through a variety of exercises and activities, including ones which give the students information on usage.

USAGE AND LEARNER’S DICTIONARIES In order for a student’s English to sound relatively natural, s/he must use words and phrases in a natural way. A student may look up an L1 word in a bilingual dictionary and be given several English words to choose from without any information about the subtle differences amongst the various choices. This is usage information. The lack of this essential information in most bilingual dictionaries creates unnatural sentences such as these written by students in an upper 50

level writing class: “Most of these people like to intone some poems”, “A father should give his children jocundity”, and “The whole family is healthy and scatheless” . Less serious but more frequently heard unnatural phrases which are also likely direct translations from the students’ L1 are “relax your mind/body” (relax), “lose my weight” (lose weight), and “use different study ways” (use different ways/methods of studying). The unnatural sentence we hear the most often is a comment on the small city in which we live, Kamloops, in western Canada: “Kamloops is very countryside”.

One of the most useful tools for usage information a language learner can own is a learner’s dictionary, which is a dictionary compiled specifically for language learners. If a student looked up the word countryside in a learner’s dictionary such as the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, s/he would find that it means “land outside towns and cities, with fields, woods, etc.” (pg. 286) and would realize that a city cannot be described as countryside. As can be seen from the definition above, these dictionaries use a limited vocabulary of common words in their definitions to make them easier to understand. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (OALD) (2000), for example, uses a defining vocabulary of approximately 3,000 words while Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) (2003) uses only 2,000 words in its definitions.

Compare the definition for critic in a regular (ie. non-learner’s) dictionary, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (COD) with that in the OALD: (COD) “a person who censures” (pg. 334) and (OALD) “a person who expresses disapproval of sb/sth and talks about their bad qualities, especially publicly” (pg. 298). Besides definitions which are easy to understand, learner’s dictionaries contain such things as grammatical information like the difference between used to and be used to (OALD, pg.

1432), illustrations like the parts of a bicycle (LDOCE, pg. 134), notes on word frequency, and notes on usage. For example, LDOCE highlights the 3,000 most frequently used English words by printing these words in red letters. In addition, it indicates for these words whether they are in the first 1,000, 2,000, or 3,000 most commonly used words in both spoken and written English. For example, the word deserve is followed by the symbols S2 and W1, which means that this word is amongst the first 2,000 most frequently used words in spoken English and amongst the first 1,000 most frequently used words in written English. This highlighting of the 3,000 most frequently used

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words allows students, if they so wish, to concentrate on learning to use the most useful vocabulary items first before progressing to less frequently used words. Finally, usage notes in learner’s dictionaries help language learners to gain active or productive knowledge which will allow them to use these words more naturally. For example, OALD lists various synonyms for thin, giving information on precise meanings of the eleven synonyms, including whether the meaning has a positive or negative connotation (pg. 1349). Usage notes in LDOCE are highlighted in “Word Choice” boxes which explain such things as the subtle differences among the words except, besides, apart from and unless (pg. 540) or the difference between recognize and realize (pg.

1365).

EXERCISES AND ACTIVITIES The more exposure students have to the vocabulary items they are trying to learn, the better chance they will have of understanding exactly how to use these words. This exposure may be through written exercises and activities, games, listening activities, writing, or reading. Following is a list of exercises and activities which can be used in classes of various skill areas and a range of levels: 1. VOCABULARY BINGO: The teacher writes 12 words on the board that the class has been working on. Each student chooses 5 of these words and writes 5 accurate sentences using these words. The teacher calls out words from the list, and students cross out their sentences which contain these words. The first student to have all his/her sentences crossed out is the potential winner. The teacher checks the student’s sentences for accuracy (checking grammar and that word is used correctly), and if the sentences are accurate, the student wins. If not, the game continues.

2. MEMORY GAME: The teacher writes 12 words on the board, asks students for the parts of speech and a clear definition or synonym and writes them on the board. The teacher then erases the words, leaving only the parts of speech and the definition or synonym.

Students must then work with a partner and remember all the words to go with the definitions or synonyms.

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3. SENTENCE GAME: In pairs, students write on a slip of paper a short sentence (5-8 words, depending on the level of the class) containing two of the words the class has been working on. The teacher then collects the sentences and gives them to other pairs, being careful to allow only one student in each pair to see the sentence. Four or five pairs of students go to the board at a time and, in each pair, the student who has the sentence must try to get his/her partner to write the sentence on the board by giving clues as to the individual words. These clues might be definitions, synonyms, antonyms, or parts of speech. For example, for “The library is closed on Sunday�, the clues might be: 1. the definite article 2. a place that lends books 3. a common verb in the present tense 4. not open 5. a preposition 6. the day after Saturday.

4. SENTENCE

RELAY:

The class is divided into two teams of 5-7 players. The teacher has

written sentences containing vocabulary words being studied. The number of sentences is the same as the number of players on a team. The teacher hands out the list of sentences to the first player on each team (each team gets the same set of sentences). Player 1 on each team reads sentence 1 enough times to memorize it, hands the list to player 2, who then starts memorizing sentence 2, and player 1 runs to the board to write it down. If s/he needs to, s/he can run back to the desk to look again at the sentence, but may not ask player 2 to give any help (eg. by calling out the sentence) . Each player does the same, and the first team who has all the sentences written perfectly on the board wins.

5. WORD ASSOCIATION: Each student is given a different vocabulary word on a slip of paper.

Each student must talk to other students in the class and find students whose words have some similarity with his/her own word and form a group with these students. Similarities might be simply part of speech (eg. all are adverbs), similarity in meaning (eg. huge, enormous, and massive), or all words associated with one topic (eg. stir, fridge, pot, and bake – food preparation).

6. ODD MAN OUT: The teacher makes up groups of 4 to 6 words, all but one of which in each group having some association or similarity, such as delay, detain, depart, deter. Students

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must choose the ‘odd man out’ and also explain the similarity amongst the other words and why the ‘odd man out’ does not fit.

7. WRITING DEFINITIONS: Each student is given 1 or 2 words (depending on size of class) that the class has been studying. The total should be no more than 20 words. Students write clear definitions for their words in their own words on a piece of paper but do not write the vocabulary words. Students mingle and read others’ definitions, trying to figure out the vocabulary words from the definitions.

8. USING ROOTS AND AFFIXES: Some words lend themselves nicely to being broken down into roots and affixes in order to understand the words’ meanings. Many vocabulary-building textbooks have been published that are based on learning the meanings of roots and affixes in order to expand students’ vocabulary. (One such book is Developing Vocabulary Skills by Dennis Keen.) Besides the exercises in the textbooks, students can be encouraged to consider not only the definitions of the words but how the words are actually used. For example, students can be asked to consider questions such as: a. circulation (n.) (circul = around) Find 2 ways this word is used (What is going around?) (possible answers: blood, books in a library, money, air, magazines and newspapers) b. distort (v.) (tort = twisted) What kinds of things can be distorted? (possible answers: reflection in water or glass, the truth) c. obstacle (n.) (ob = against, in the way, stopping) What kinds of things can be obstacles? (possible answers: a fallen tree across a road, lack of money – an obstacle to education, lack of education – an obstacle to a good job) Both concrete and figurative meanings should be discussed and whether a word has a positive or negative connotation or is neutral should also be discussed.

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9. ANALOGIES: (word A is to word B as word C is to word D) Filling in blanks in analogies can be yet another way students can be encouraged to think deeply about the meanings of words. Students must fill in the missing words from the list of words the class has been working on. The teacher can also ask students to explain the relationships between the pairs of words. For example: a. cotton : natural :: polyester : ( artificial ) (explanation of

relationship: artificial means not natural or man-made and

polyester is man-made whereas cotton grows naturally) b. highway : bus :: tunnel : (subway) (explanation of relationship: a bus travels on a highway and a subway travels in a tunnel) 10. USAGE

OF ADJECTIVES:

Some adjectives are used only to describe people, others only

describe things, and some are used to describe both people and things. When the class has looked at a number of adjectives (perhaps 12 to 15), students can be asked to divide these adjectives into the 3 categories mentioned above. (They can do this on paper or the teacher can make a card for each adjective and students can sort them into three piles.)

They can also be asked to think about the kinds of things or people that each of the adjectives might describe. For example, if some of the adjectives are needy, mobile, vacant, and, coastal, students would divide them and comment on them as follows: people: needy (someone lacking the necessities) people and things: mobile (phone, home, person unable to walk on own becomes mobile with wheelchair, vehicle, etc.) things: vacant (hotel room, chair, building, look); coastal (town , city, waters)

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CONCLUSIONS Having the vocabulary necessary to express what a person wants to express is vital to communicating in a language. Teachers of English as a Second language should encourage their students to learn frequently used vocabulary items before more specialized vocabulary, learning not only the definitions, but also how to use the words naturally. Repeated exposure to vocabulary items through reading, listening, written exercises, and activities will help students retain these words and learn how to use them accurately.

REFERENCES Barber, K. (ed.). 1998. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Don Mills: Oxford University Press.

Coxhead, A. 1998. An academic word list. English Language Institute Occasional Publication No. 18. Wellington, NZ: School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington.

Hornby, A.S. 2000. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Keen, D. 1992. Developing Vocabulary Skills. Boston: Heinle and Heinle.

Nation, P. and R. Waring. 1997. Vocabulary size, text coverage and word lists. In N. Schmitt and M. McCarthy (eds.).

Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 6-19.

Summers, D. (ed.). 2003. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Harlow: Longman.

West, M. 1953. A General Service List of English Words. London: Longman, Green.

Xue, G. and ISP Nation. 1984. A university word list. Language Learning and Communication 3, 2:215-229.

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CULTURAL AWARENESS AND THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK (CEF) Frank Farmer Universidad de Quintana Roo, Unidad Cozumel ABSTRACT The Common European Framework catalogues the elements of communicative competence in language use at different levels of achievement, providing descriptors which may be applied equally to different European languages. These descriptors serve as a guide to teaching and learning as well as for validating learner achievements. However, the CEF has been criticized for being open to abuse by administrators and creating unnecessary difficulties for teachers.

This paper will consider these criticisms in the cultural context of Mexico. It will be shown that many aspects of the Common European Framework serve to empower both teachers and students, providing the basis for both external assessments of methodologies and outcomes as well as constructive reflection and self evaluation.

Key words: Common European Framework, language teaching, learning, validation.

INTRODUCTION The Common European Framework catalogues the elements of communicative competence in language use at different levels of achievement, providing descriptors which may be applied equally to different European languages. These descriptors serve as a guide to teaching and learning as well as for validating learner achievements.

Ongoing research into how languages are learned has so far been inconclusive, so attempts to at least describe what successful learning is must be welcome. However, the Common European Framework has been criticized in several ways.

The CEF will first be described, and the criticisms noted. A reply to the criticisms will then be offered based principally on the text of the CEF document. There will be a brief survey of creative uses of the CEF, and conclusions regarding the appropriate use of the CEF presented.

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1.- WHAT IS IN THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK? The full title of the book is Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. There are nine chapters in the book, and a review of the chapter headings will give an idea of the scope of the CEF. 1. THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK IN ITS POLITICAL AND EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT. In this chapter the CEF is described in relation to the aims and objectives of the Council of Europe language policy, which encourages language users to develop a ‘plurilinguistic’ repertory in which ‘all linguistic abilities have a place’. (Council of Europe 2001:5). It outlines the uses contemplated for the CEF and the criteria for developing it.

2. APPROACH ADOPTED. The action oriented approach views learners and users of a language as people who have tasks (not exclusively linguistic tasks) to perform in a particular social context. This approach proposes using descriptions of the general and linguistic competences users may need as guides for teaching, learning and assessing achievement.

3. COMMON REFERENCE LEVELS These are described and illustrated and their use explained. There are three descriptions of user competence, each divided into two levels: Basic user (A 1 and 2) independent user (B1 and 2) and proficient user (C1 and 2).

4. LANGUAGE USE AND THE LANGUAGE USER/LEARNER This chapter presents an analysis of the purposes of language use including strategies and processes for communication.

5. THE USER/LEARNER’S COMPETENCES. These are divided into the general competences that adults in any society may have, and communicative language competences. The analysis presented respects the fact that real life tasks do not have just a linguistic dimension, but draw on general competences too.

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6. LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING. The CEF as applied to the content and process of language learning as well as how it may be supported by examiners, authorities, materials writers and teachers are dealt with in this chapter. It also deals with difficult issues where there is conflict in the literature concerning the effectiveness of particular methodologies and approaches to error correction.

7. TASKS AND THEIR ROLE IN LANGUAGE TEACHING Tasks are seen as a key element in language education in line with the analysis in chapter 2. The description, performance and difficulty of tasks are discussed in detail.

8. Linguistic diversification and the curriculum This chapter makes it clear that the level descriptors are not in themselves a curriculum.

The implications for curriculum design using the CEF are discussed in detail, taking into account both linguistic and cultural objectives for a range of possible levels of competence.

9. Assessment The use of the CEF as a resource for assessment is discussed in detail, with examples.

This is perhaps the best-known use of the CEF, due to its adoption by the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE) and Cambridge ESOL in particular. It is emphasized that the descriptors used in the CEF are suitable for criterion references exams.

In addition to the nine chapters, there are four appendices (A-D) of which C and D are of particular interest. Appendix C presents DIALANG scales, an instrument for self diagnosis of language competence by adult learners. Appendix D presents the ALTE ‘Can do’ statements, a set of simplified, positively worded statements of competences in reading, writing, speaking and listening at six levels in three user contexts: 1. social and tourism, 2. work, and 3. study.

2.- WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE CEF? At the 2005 conference of International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL), the ELT Journal debate was about the Common European Framework. The

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motion proposed was ‘Common European Framework? We don’t need bureaucrats to tell us what to teach’.

The following five points were made in proposing the motion (Smith 2005): 1. The CEF is too ambitious. It is impossible to make an exhaustive list of language situations.

2. The application of the assessment tables is too difficult.

3. The CEF favours the communicative approach.

4. The CEF overlooks the need for equal opportunities for learning.

5. The CEF has been imposed on teachers by administrators.

From a Mexican perspective, we may add other objections: 6. The CEF is European and does not apply to Mexico 7. The CEF favours native speaker teachers in its methodology and educational philosophy.

8. The CEF is only about general English. In México we are often concerned with English for specific purposes (ESP)

3.- A REPLY TO THE OBJECTIONS The objections raised above will be answered with reference to the CEF itself, in the first instance. It will be shown that the framework does not itself impose bureaucracy on professional teaching, and that in many cases it empowers users of the Framework in providing a better service to students. It also foresees and specifically rebuts possible abuses of the Framework.

1. THE CEF IS TOO AMBITIOUS. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST OF LANGUAGE SITUATIONS.

The document is ambitious. ‘...the Framework aims to be not only comprehensive, transparent and coherent, but also open, dynamic and non-dogmatic.’ (Council of Europe 2001:

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18). Transparency and coherency are achieved by being explicit about the philosophy behind the framework, and comprehensiveness is aided by the way the language situations are described.

Language situations are divided into four domains (Council of Europe 2001: 45). These are described under the classifications personal, public, occupational and educational, and it is acknowledged that in many situations more than one domain may be involved.

In each domain there are four different kinds of language activities (Council of Europe 2001: 14), classified as: Reception, including reading and listening activities Production, including speaking and writing activities Interaction, where at least two people participate in an oral or written exchange, and Mediation, where a translator or interpreter makes communication possible between others.

For each language activity in each domain, the CEF provides descriptors for measuring performance within each of the six levels identified in the CEF (Council of Europe 2001: 33-36).

2. THE APPLICATION OF THE ASSESSMENT TABLES IS TOO DIFFICULT. In point 1 it was noted that the CEF is divided into four domains, each domain into four types of language activities and each activity into six levels. Thus users of the framework are not required to refer simultaneously to all language descriptors, but just those that are relevant in any language situation. The CEF also provides global descriptors and self assessment instruments.

It is accepted that the use of the CEF is challenging, but arguably a professional teaching and assessment service is inconceivable without an adequate framework, and the CEF is by far the most methodical and comprehensive available.

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3. THE CEF FAVOURS THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH. It has been noted that the CEF is deliberately non-dogmatic and does not take a position on any theoretical dispute on language acquisition or learning, or any approach to language teaching (Council of Europe 2001: 18).

However, it is unashamedly an instrument for describing communicative language competence in the three areas of linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences (Council of Europe 2001: 13). There are other possible purposes for language learning. Ancient Greek and Latin have long been taught without any communicative purpose, but rather as an indicator of certain intellectual abilities in learners and for the supposed benefits of reading classics in the original. Nothing in the CEF prevents the teaching of languages for purposes other than communication, but it does facilitate describing those purposes with more precision.

4. THE CEF OVERLOOKS THE NEED FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR LEARNING. Equal opportunity for learning is a matter for individual governments in their education policies, but it can be argued that the CEF provides a framework for describing the kind of language education which should be made available and verifying its effectiveness. The CEF specifically acknowledges the importance of recognizing and certifying all levels of competence, not just the achievement of set levels of proficiency (Council of Europe 2001: 4) which surely benefits all learners in a competitive environment.

5. THE CEF HAS BEEN IMPOSED ON TEACHERS BY ADMINISTRATORS. The CEF suggests specific roles for users of the Framework to facilitate language learning (Council of Europe 2001: 140-141). The users identified are examiners, authorities, textbook writers, teachers and learners, so that administrators are just one of five types of users of the framework. The framework suggests that authorities may use the framework for the definition of learning objectives in terms of tasks, themes and competences. They are not obliged to specify in detail grammar, vocabulary and functional notional repertoires nor are they obliged to specify classroom methodologies. The framework therefore empowers teachers who feel that the imposition of detailed requirements and specific methodologies diminish their professionalism.

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6. THE CEF IS EUROPEAN AND DOES NOT APPLY TO MEXICO The CEF is an initiative of the European Community because of the pressing need to facilitate communication between speakers of different languages in Europe. There is no reason why the same framework should not be applied to other contexts, such as native American languages.

7. THE CEF FAVOURS NATIVE SPEAKER TEACHERS IN ITS METHODOLOGY AND EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY.

Some aspects of communicative language teaching can be criticized for favouring native speakers. For instance, concentration on meaning at the expense of form, and on spoken rather than written language could be said to put non-native speaker teachers at a disadvantage.

However, it is clear from the CEF that no such discrimination is intended and that no teaching approach is excluded.

8. THE CEF IS ONLY ABOUT GENERAL ENGLISH. IN MÉXICO WE ARE OFTEN CONCERNED WITH ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP) ESP is not a special kind of English, but rather an approach that seeks to match learner’s needs more closely with teaching content. The CEF covers a range of domains, activities and levels, so that it facilitates a good fit between learners’ needs and teaching objectives.

4.- APPLICATIONS OF THE CEF: A CRITICAL COMMENTARY Hayworth (2006) gives a careful and impartial overview of what the CEF is, what its aims are, and its relationship with the European Language Portfolio (ELP) He points out particularly the wide acceptance of the common reference levels in the organization of both teaching and assessment.

It has been suggested above that many criticisms of the CEF on the grounds of its limited applications may be unfounded, and significant innovative uses of the CEF have been reported:

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1. Charles and Huhta (2005) report on the development and piloting of on-line tests intended to give constructive feedback to users.

2. Little (2005) reports on developments in self assessment using the ELP in an Irish context.

3. Alexander (2005) found CEF descriptors useful for developing and validating courses in English for Specific Purposes.

All of these applications have been made possible by the existence of a bank of descriptors of language learning outcomes in a multi level framework.

However, all of these studies report difficulties and the need to adapt descriptors for specific purposes and contexts. Adapting the CEF may not be an automatic or routine procedure, and teachers may not be sufficiently well prepared or aware of the issues to accept responsibility for the appropriate use and adaptation of the descriptors.

The main problems identified in the literature are: 1. The lack of preparation of language teachers in issues of assessment (Brindley 1997, Hasselgreen 2005) 2. Cultural contexts affect the level of difficulty represented by ‘Can do’ statements (Weir 2005) 3. Age and life experience changes the level of difficulty of tasks, so that young learners may not get a fair test (Hasselgreen 2005) 4. Claims made about conforming to the CEF have in many cases not been validated (Figueras etal. 2005) 5. There are dangers in the institutionalization and uncritical use of the CEF which need to be guarded against (Fulcher 2004)

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CONCLUSIONS The CEF is not a solution to all the problems of language teaching, learning and validation.

It is one of a number of tools available for describing learning outcomes, and like other useful instruments, it needs careful use in skilled hands. However, not to use it may mean remaining in the stone age as far as setting objectives for teaching and learning and assessment of language learning is concerned.

In Mexico, we should not expect to be able to apply the CFE to all aspects of teaching, learning and validation unaltered. Teachers have the responsibility to use the tool wisely and make the adaptations which may be necessary for the purposes that arise. There may be a need for wider training in using the CFE, both to improve teaching, learning and validation and to avoid abuses of the instrument.

REFERENCES Alderson, C., and A. Huhta 2005. ‘The development of a suite of computer bases¿d diagnostic tests based on the Common European Framework.’ Language Testing 22/3 301-320.

Alexander, R. 2005. ‘Can can-dos do anything to improve tertiary level ESP curricula. In Beaven, B. (ed.) IATEFL 2005 Cardiff Conference Selections. Canterbury: IATEFL Brindley, G.1997. ‘Assessment and the language teacher’ The Language Teacher Online [on-line] http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/titl/97/sep/brindley/html [last accessed 07/02/02] Council of Europe 2001. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Figueras, N. , B. North, S. Takala, N. Verhelst and P. Van Avermaet. 2005.’Relating examinations to the Common European Framework: a manual’. Language Testing 22/3 261-279.

Fulcher, G. 2004. ‘Deluded by artifices? The Common European Framework and harmonization. Language Assesment Quarterly / 253-266.

Hayworth, F. 2006. ‘Key Concepts in ELT. The Common European Framework.’ ELT Journal 60/2 181- 183.

Little, D. 2005. ‘The Common European Framework and the European Language Portfolio: involving learners and their judgments in the assessment process’. Language Testing 22/3 321-336.

Smith, K. 2005. ‘ELT Journal debate: We don’t need bureaucrats to tell us what to teach’ In Beaven, B. (ed.) IATEFL 2005 Cardiff Conference Selections. Canterbury: IATEFL. Wier, C. 2005. ‘Limitations of the Common European Framework for developing comparable examinations and tests.

Language Testing 22/3 281-300.

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THE VOCABULARY LEARNING STRATEGIES OF UNIVERSITY EFL LEARNERS Alfredo Marín Marín Universidad de Quintana Roo, Campus Chetumal ABSTRACT This paper reports on a preliminary study on the use of vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) by 185 students enrolled in a five-year English major at the University of Veracruz. The data collection instruments were an open VLS questionnaire with three general questions and semistructured interviews, whose thorough analyses resulted in a 78-item VLS questionnaire more or less consistent with similar instruments developed by Ahmed, 1988; Stoffer, 1995; Schmitt, 1997; Nakamura, 2000; Fan, 2003; Gu, 2003. The interview data were “surveyed” via the VLS questionnaire that included eight categories (guessing, skipping, dictionary-use, social-discovery, note-taking, repetition, association, and further-consolidation strategies).

The results showed that further consolidation emerged as the most frequently used VLS category, followed by dictionary-use and repetition strategies. In contrast, skipping and association strategies were the least frequently reported categories. Further, an analysis of individual VLS showed interesting result that will be discussed in this paper.

1.- INTRODUCTION Considerable research has been done in the realm of vocabulary learning strategies across several countries. To the best of my knowledge, to date no published empirical studies on VLS have been conducted in Mexico. Hence, as suggested by Scholfield 1 (personal communication, 2001), it was felt necessary to start by looking into the EFL situation in Mexico.

The rationale behind this suggestion lies in the fact that sometimes it is taken for granted that research instruments (e.g. language learning strategies questionnaires) may be administered to any kind of student populations without considering other factors such as culture, learning 1

P. J. Scholfield is a senior lecturer at the University of Essex and his field of expertise is L2 vocabulary teaching and learning (http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~scholp/).

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environment, the mother tongue, and the like. What follows then is an account of a preliminary study that paved the way for a wider investigation (Marin-Marin, 2005) in which other variables were examined.

2.- OBJECTIVES Basically, the preliminary study had a two-fold purpose. As a primary objective, it aimed to validate the contents and organisation of a Vocabulary Learning Strategies Questionnaire (VLS-Q).

It was felt that the preliminary study would result in a more valid instrument that reflected the actual situation in Mexico than just adapting existing questionnaires from the literature (e.g. Ahmed, 1988; Stoffer, 1995; Schmitt, 1997; Kudo, 1999; Nakamura, 2000).2 Likewise, as a secondary, but important objective, this study set out to provide a preliminary descriptive picture of how Mexican university students learn English vocabulary both inside and outside the classroom. More specifically, the following research questions were stated as follows: RQ1. What are the most and least frequently reported vocabulary learning strategies?

RQ2. What are the most and least frequently reported vocabulary learning strategy categories?

3.- PARTICIPANTS The participants were 185 EFL learners enrolled in an English major at the University of Veracruz, Mexico. This is a five-year undergraduate programme that consists of three main areas of study: English language teaching, English-Spanish-English translation, and English literature.

During the first three years of enrolment all the students are lumped together in a common core curriculum and take subjects such as general English, English workshop on the four skills, Western culture, Spanish, among others. It is during the last two years of their studies that the students have the three optional components mentioned above. It should be pointed out that most of the learners start learning English formally at university level, though they are supposed to have acquired the basic communicative skills at earlier levels of education, i.e. three years in secondary school and one year in high school. Anyhow, at university the participants of the preliminary study 2

More recent VLS questionnaires have been designed by Fan (2003) and Gu (2003) both intended for Chinese learners of English.

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were exposed, at least in the classroom, to English in that most of the courses of this programme are given in the target language. As a matter of fact, compulsory general English courses are taught almost throughout the programme. Finally, a valid reason for choosing this university for the preliminary study lies in the fact that the participants share some common characteristics with those in the main study in terms of previous educational background, English major, EFL environment, years of studies, and age. Thus, it can be said that a parallel group of participants was available without any risk of contaminating the data of the main study as the distance between the two universities is about 1000 kilometres.

4.- INSTRUMENTS AND PROCEDURE Two instruments were used for collecting the data: an open questionnaire and a semistructured interview. Initially, it had been planned to include a classroom activity, similar to a focus group. This activity would encourage the learners to talk about those “special tricks” they used to learn English vocabulary. Unfortunately, no other classes were available for this due to several constraints such as timetable clashes, exam periods, and lack of classrooms.

1.

THE OPEN QUESTIONNAIRE As suggested by Scholfield (personal communication, 2001), the open questionnaire (OQ)

should reflect the logical sequence that learners may follow when meeting unfamiliar vocabulary items, from initial discovery to consolidation whenever the learner decides to do something about it.

Thus, the OQ was divided into three main sections: dealing with unfamiliar vocabulary items, note taking, and memorising/retaining new words. Each section included a general stem sentence with two sample sentences of how to complete them, (i.e. VLS). For example: SECTION I - DEALING WITH UNFAMILIAR VOCABULARY ITEMS. When I meet a new word, which is not directly explained by the teacher or the book and I want to know what it means…

I check if the word looks similar to Spanish.

I ask the teacher/classmate for a translation.

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The OQ also included a brief introduction about the main purpose of the instrument followed by detailed instructions to complete it. Regarding the learners’ background information, they were required to provide just the university year of study and the class/group number. No other personal information (e.g. English learning experience) was requested as the researcher formerly worked at the university and was generally acquainted with that. More importantly, the OQ was translated into Spanish to ensure that the learners understood the contents of the instrument.

In addition to this, the researcher personally administered the OQ to all groups in class time and was attentive to any queries from the participants. It should be noted that no time limit was set to complete the OQ and that a space was given so that the participants could add any other relevant information concerned with VLS. All in all, the open questionnaire was administered to 185 EFL learners. In advance, the researcher asked the Head of the Department of Languages for permission to collect the data.

Once permission was granted, scheduled visits to ten classrooms were made at the very beginning of the English lesson to avoid disruption. In the classroom, the researcher introduced himself to the learners, talked about the purpose of the study, and explained the procedures for the completion of the questionnaire. It must be pointed out that the term “learning strategy” was carefully defined with examples of language learning strategies. In general, the learners seemed to be familiar with learning strategies, maybe because they were enrolled in an English major.

2. 4.2 The semi-structured interview The interview basically followed the same sections covered in the open questionnaire.

Obviously, this retrospective instrument allowed the learners to describe more in detail what they claimed to do when meeting new words and their subsequent strategic behaviours. Each section included a main question and some follow-up questions, which served as prompts in case the interviewees remained silent. For example: SECTION I - DEALING WITH UNFAMILIAR VOCABULARY ITEMS. When you meet a new word, if it is not directly explained by the teacher or the book, how do you figure out its meaning?

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Follow-ups:  Do you ever guess? How?  Do you ever use a dictionary? Monolingual or bilingual? What do you look up in the dictionary?  Do you ever skip new words and not bother with them?  Do you ask other people? Who? What information do you ask about?

Thirty-three students (21 females and 12 males) volunteered for individual interviews, which lasted between 8 and 21 minutes and were done either in English or Spanish by the researcher alone. From each of the ten classes, at least two students were invited to participate; in other classes, three or more volunteered. During the interview, the learners were encouraged to talk about what they actually did currently to learn vocabulary on their own, not what they did at early stages of their studies or what they would like to do. More importantly, as suggested by Kvale (1996), the interview generally started with a briefing and finished with a debriefing. Thus, in the briefing the researcher somewhat “broke the ice,” stated the purpose of the interview and clarified any doubts. Regarding the debriefing, the researcher commented on some interview outcomes as a way of creating a sense of relevance to the interviewee’s contributions.

Finally, it should be noted that the students who completed the questionnaire were also invited to the interview. Initially and ideally, it was best thought to interview students who had not completed the questionnaire; however, this was not achieved due to the reasons stated previously such as timetable clashes, exam periods, and lack of classrooms. Anyhow, for the purpose of this preliminary study, this fact cannot be considered as a drawback; rather, it was taken as an opportunity to find out more about the interviewees’ vocabulary learning strategies.

5.- DATA ANALYSES. A few weeks after collecting the data via the open questionnaire and the semistructure interview, the researcher went back to the University of Essex to start the analyses, whose final product would be a validated vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire. What follows is a general account of how this was done since for reasons of space a detailed description cannot be granted.

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1. 5.1 THE ANALYSIS OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE The data analysis of the open questionnaire involved three main stages, i.e. data extraction, data classification, data reduction. In general, the learners differed in the amount of information they provided in the OQ. That is to say, some students provided considerable information about the strategies they use whereas others just reported using one or two strategies in each section or even wrote about something else.

All in all, the data extraction stage involved grouping the questionnaires according to the students’ academic year at university (1 to 5) and then analysing all the information written down in the three sections of the OQ. Obviously, the product such an analysis contained a great number of redundancies; however, the aim was to consider all the instances of VLS. A week later, for reliability purposes the same procedure was followed as if it were the first time the researcher was analysing the data following the same broad identification. Then, both sets of almost raw data were compared and the most noticeable redundancies were cleared up giving rise to a more compact set of statements about strategies after analysing the questionnaires twice.

At the data classification stage, the second list resulting from the previous stage was analysed by bearing in mind other more specific categories suggested in the literature. Likewise, the very nature of the data collected in the form of statements about strategies from each section led the researcher to come up with further subcategorisations. For example, for dealing with unknown vocabulary (i.e. the first section of the OQ), strategies were tentatively grouped into guessing, using dictionaries and asking others. Note-taking strategies, on the other hand, were stratified into location (i.e. places where the information about new words were recorded such as vocabulary notebooks, wall charts, word cards, etc.) and type of information noted down (i.e.

Spanish translation, English definitions, synonyms, etc), and organisation of notes (i.e. alphabetical order, part of speech, etc). Memorising strategies were in turn split into repetition, associations, and further consolidation. This preliminary classification was then subjected to further analysis and validation by considering more specific criteria in some categories as suggested by a second expert, Scholfield.

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Finally, by data condensation is meant boiling down the number of VLS as much as possible by getting rid of all redundancies and combining strategies that can sensibly go together in a single one. In the end, this reduced number of strategies would take the form of the questionnaire that was going to be used in a wider investigation. The data reduction procedure was carried out manually by analysing each category along with its subcategories separately and by the year variable. Also, in an unsophisticated way, a colour code (word processor highlighting) was used to put common strategies together. Ultimately this recursive process ended up with a more or less condensed list of 112 vocabulary learning strategies 2. THE ANALYSIS OF THE INTERVIEWS The analysis of the interviews was done more or less in parallel fashion with the OQ analysis. Most importantly, the interviews played a crucial part in the preliminary study in that they helped to  validate what learners stated in the OQ by triangulation,  clarify some vague statements reported in OQ,  incorporate other strategies not stated in the OQ. The analysis of the interviews was entirely guided by the three main sections of the open questionnaire – ‘meeting new words’, ‘note taking.’ and ‘memorising words.’ On the basis of these criteria, notes were taken from each of the 33 taped interviews.

In general, the interviews corroborated the different strategies reported in the open questionnaire across the year of studies (i.e. 1-5). Moreover, the contents of the interviews provided some more specific information about some VLS. For instance, in the OQ, many learners reported using a dictionary but did not state what kind of dictionary they used or what kind of information they looked up. Another example of vagueness had to do with ‘guessing meaning by context,’ which was frequently reported in the OQ. Thus, through the interviews it could be realised that learners were referring mostly to the written context, either immediate or wider context. Other learners meant by context the topic of the text or the conversation they were involved in.

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In summary, the VLS-Q ended up with 78 items, which still may be considered as a long research instrument. It is comparable with Stoffer’s (1995) – 53, Kudo’s (1999) – 44 items, Nakamura’s (2000) – 70 items, Fan’s (2003) – 60 items, and Gu’s (2003) – 78 items). However, it can be argued that the VLS-Q aimed to be as inclusive as possible. It should be recalled that initially the preliminary versions consisted of 112 items, which were extracted from a large number of reported strategies. The 78-item questionnaire along with an account of what learners reported can be found in Appendix A. Such accounts were taken from both the open questionnaires and the interviews. Each item is given an endnote number in which the original learners’ utterances are included for the sake of validity. Thus, the main objective of the preliminary study was achieved: the design of a VLS-Q representative of the learning context in Mexico.

6.- RESULTS AND DISCUSSION OF THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS In this section, the second objective of the preliminary study is briefly reported. Once the VLS-Q was thoroughly revised in collaboration with Scholfield, an attempt was made to use it to provide a picture of the vocabulary learning situation in the University of Veracruz, Mexico. It was decided to re-analyse only the contents of the interviews to answer the research questions stated above in that they provided more specific information about learning strategies. For example, when the interviewees reported guessing meaning from context, the researcher had the opportunity to find out how exactly they guessed. The open questionnaire, on the other hand, because of its nature, elicited vague, and less detailed information than the interviews, e.g. ‘I look up the word in the dictionary.’ Therefore, it would have been less sensible to consider the OQ for this kind of analysis as the instrument in itself was not intended for such a purpose. However, it must be admitted that even during the interviews the learners could have omitted important information about other vocabulary learning strategies they use. In sum, 33 learners (12 males and 21 females) were “surveyed” with the VLS-Q. Thus, the researcher reviewed the interviews, noted down the reported strategies from the list of 78 and fed them into SPSS for descriptive statistics.

RQ1. What are the most and least frequently reported vocabulary learning strategies?

To answer this question the occurrences of each strategy among the 33 learners were counted. The percentage was, then, calculated on the basis of the number of learners who 73

reported using each strategy. Table 6.1 shows the 10 most frequently reported vocabulary learning strategies regardless of such variables as proficiency level and gender (and of course with no consideration given to how frequently each person used them).

Table 6.1 The most-reported VLS

No.

Strategy number and name

Count/33 %

6

Guess meaning by context in sentence/paragraph.*

32

97

14

Use dictionary to check meaning(s).

30

91

78

Look for opportunities to meet new words.

30

91

12

Look up word in monolingual dictionary.

25

76

75

Test myself or have others test me.

25

76

38

Write down Spanish translation.

22

67

18

Use dictionary to check examples/fixed expressions.

21

64

10

Look up word in bilingual dictionary.

20

61

19

Ask classmates/friends/relatives for translation.

20

61

54

Say word aloud repeatedly.

20

61

* It should be noted that the items are worded in short sentences for the purpose of presentation of results. The actual items of VLS-Q include longer sentences and examples.

As can be seen, ‘guessing meaning by written context’ was the most used strategy, at 97 per cent. That is, almost all the learners said during the interview that they used such a strategy.

This trend may be attributed to three possible factors: (1) positive strategic transfer from L1, especially in reading, (2) strategies explicitly or implicitly encouraged by the teachers and (3) the tasks the learners do in class. Moreover, 91 percent of the respondents reported that they used a dictionary, either bilingual or monolingual. In fact, four of the most used strategies have to do with the use of dictionary to check meanings, example sentences and fixed expressions. Interestingly, a monolingual dictionary (76 %) was reported more often than a bilingual one (61 %) maybe because

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the learners were enrolled in an English-major and they were encouraged to use this type of dictionary. Another of the most commonly used strategies is that of finding opportunities to meet new words, at 91 per cent, which indicates that the learners seemed to be motivated to find different sources of input even in an EFL environment where there are few opportunities to practise the target language. The sources of input for these learners typically consist of books, magazines, satellite TV, internet, and a little contact with native speakers of English. Similarly, testing on vocabulary either alone or with a classmate was reported by 76 % of the learners. In the interviews some learners said that they used to gather together days before the mid-term and final exams, which included a vocabulary section. More importantly, the use of translation when writing down information about new words and when appealing for assistance was frequently reported, at 67 and 61 per cent respectively. This finding appears to contradict the idea that the nature of the major the learners were enrolled in may be a factor in greater use of monolingual dictionaries. However, the learners also reported writing down (51 %) an English definition and asking the teacher for one as well (48 %). Finally, repeating the word aloud was a common strategy in that 60 percent of the learners maintain that they used such a strategy, though some admitted that it was not a good strategy.

Overall, if the ten most used strategies in this preliminary study are compared with those in Schmitt’s (1997), some similarities can be pointed out, especially in what he labelled as discovery strategies. Thus ‘bilingual dictionary,’ ‘guess from textual context,’ and ‘ask classmates for meaning’ were also found in the preliminary study, though with slightly different names. Likewise, Nakamura (2000) obtained consistent results with those of Schmitt’s. The similarities are striking since it should be remembered that their studies were conducted with Japanese learners of English. Regarding consolidation strategies, other common strategies were found in the three studies, that is, ‘say the word aloud’ combined with ‘verbal repetition’ and ‘take notes in class.’

Therefore, it seems that some vocabulary learning strategies appear to be universal, though this conclusion should be treated with caution as this preliminary study analysis relied on only 33 interviews.

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As to the least reported vocabulary learning strategies, Table 6.2 shows that 14 strategies were reported by only 3 per cent of the interviewees (that is, by only one learner). It should be noted that as all of these strategies had the same percentage, they were arranged in the order they appear in the actual VLS-Q (see strategy number). More importantly, if close attention is paid to the table below, it can be noticed that four strategies about making associations are among the least used strategies, which supports the above finding that for consolidation learners prefer to say the words aloud several times. This finding may also indicate that learners have not been trained in these kinds of deeper strategies. It should be remembered that neither the keyword method nor relating the new word to word families to consolidate meaning was reported in the interviews, consistent with the low use of the other strategies for making associations.

Table 6.2 The least-reported VLS

No.

Strategy number and name

Count/33 %

2

Analyse word structure when guessing.

1

3

4

Guess meaning by sound.

1

3

5

Guess meaning by pictures in text.

1

3

11

Look up word in electronic dictionary.

1

3

29

Ask teacher for grammar of the word.

1

3

36

Record words on audio-cassettes.

1

3

45

Write down grammar of the word.

1

3

46

Write down contextual/situation use.

1

3

48

Organise words by unit/lesson.

1

3

61

Repeat word and L2 definition.

1

3

63

Relate word to L2 word with similar sound.

1

3

65

Relate word to word in L3/L4.

1

3

68

Relate word to collocations.

1

3

69

Associate word with semantically related words.

1

3

76

Similarly, four note-taking strategies were not highly reported, which may be an unsurprising result in that, for example, recording words on audiocassettes might be a boring task for the learner. Also, writing grammatical information about new words, and writing the contextual/situational use of the word, organising them into units or lessons of the textbook are not commonplace among the learners as they seem to prefer to write down other aspects of the words such as pronunciation (24 %), English definition (52 %), Spanish translation (67 %) and to write down words in the order they appear (46 %). Interestingly, the low report of writing down grammatical information about a new word is supported by the finding that learners do not ask the teacher for that either, because they are more concerned with meaning and pronunciation as shown above. A common trend of low use can be observed in three guessing strategies which involve looking at the pictures in the text, the morphological features of the word, and the way the word sounds. In this respect, Scholfield (personal communication) points that pictures may not be available with many texts the learners read and that guessing from sound is an unreliable beginner VLS, which they might rightly not use. Thus, the learners seem to opt to guess meaning from textual context, which was the most frequently used strategy. Finally, two other least-reported strategies are ‘look up the word in an electronic dictionary’ and ‘repeat the word along with its English definition.’ In fact, the use of electronic dictionaries (e.g. pocket and computerised) is not as popular as in Japan, for example (Yonnaly and Gilfert, 1995), despite the apparent advantages over paperback dictionaries in terms of ease and time. However, the situation in Mexico is more a matter of economic resources, especially in state schools where some learners cannot even afford to buy a hard-copy dictionary. As to repeating the new word and its L2 definition, it can be argued that although the learners write down the word in such a fashion (52 %), they may tend to repeat the word alone (42 %), an outcome that may be supported by the finding that learners say the word aloud several times (61 %) or even silently (52 %). Also in the interviews, some learners emphasised that they said the word several times, but without extra information such as definition and translation.

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RQ2. What are the most and least frequently reported vocabulary learning strategy categories?

In order to answer this question, the 78 items of the VLS-Q were logically grouped into eight main categories: guessing, skipping, dictionary-use, social-discovery, note-taking, repetition, association, and further consolidation strategies. It must be noted that other VLS taxonomies were used as criteria for this categorisation (Ahmed, 1988; Schmitt, 1997; Nakamura, 2000). Also, the categorisation follows the sequence of the questionnaire as presented to the respondents.

Table 6.3 shows in rank order the proportion of strategy use according to the eight categories described above. It should be noted that the low percentages in strategy use may be due to the fact some individual strategies were not reported so frequently in the interviews, affecting the percentage of the category of strategies as a whole. Another factor is the nature of the categorisation itself: categories containing some high use strategies (e.g. the use of BD in category three) may have their percentage use brought down by the fact that they contain rather more low use strategies (e.g. types of information sought). Other examples can be noted in the strategies ‘use keyword method’ and ‘think of prefixes/suffixes of the word,’ which were not reported at all in the interviews and which bring down the percentage for category seven (association strategies).

Anyhow, having this caveat in mind, it is felt that the strategies presented in categories still may reflect some interesting and distinctive patterns as seen below.

Table 6.3 Percentage of strategy use by categories

Rank

Strategy Category

N

Sum/max

%

1

Further consolidation (4) *

33

74/132

56

2

Dictionary use (9)

33

128/297

43

3

Repetition (9)

33

83/297

28

4

Guessing (7)

33

57/231

25

5

Note-taking (24)

33

195/792

24

78

6

Social-discovery (11)

33

78/363

21

7

Association (12)

33

60/396

15

8

Skipping (2)

33

7/66

11

* The number in brackets indicates the number of strategies classified in each category. The percentage was calculated as follows: the total number of subjects multiplied by the total number of strategies in each category as the maximum score, then the actual score for reported strategies used in that category was multiplied by 100 and divided by the maximum score: e.g. 74 X 100 ÷ 132 = 56.06 for category 8.

The results show that ‘further consolidation’ strategies are used by 56 per cent of the learners, which makes it the most-used strategy category. This outcome may be accounted for by the learners’ awareness and motivation to increase their English vocabulary even in an EFL environment where there are few opportunities to practise the target language in real-life situations.

In fact, only 12 % of the respondents reported asking native speakers for meaning. Other factors may also explain this result such as the English-major curriculum itself that states that learners should pass a series of in-house English tests which necessarily include a vocabulary section.

Furthermore, the second most-used strategy category is that of ‘dictionary use,’ at 43 per cent. It seems that these learners see the conventional (non-electronic) dictionary as a good source of vocabulary knowledge as they not only look up the meaning of new word, but also look at pronunciation, grammatical category and example sentences. Interestingly, the learners appear to be using the dictionary more often than asking others for meaning (21 %), which may suggest that they have received some training on dictionary use or that they ask others for an approximate definition in Spanish or English and resort to the dictionary for more detailed information about unknown words. This can be seen from the low percentages in asking someone for spelling/pronunciation (3 %) grammatical information about the word (3 %), example sentences (9 %), etc.

The third most used strategy category is that of repetition strategies, at 28 per cent. It seems that the learners rely to a great extent upon this traditional approach to committing words to memory as compared with the use of association strategies (15 %), which may not receive enough attention on the part of the teacher and learners. A similar pattern can be noted in the guessing

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category (25 %) if it is contrasted with that of skipping (11 %). That is, when learners meet a new word they try to figure out its meaning, look up the word in the dictionary or ask for assistance before they skip the new word. If the learners do not skip over words very often, then, it can be suggested that they do not give up easily or that they may have a high level of ‘noticing’ as noted in the literature (Nation, 2001). More importantly, the percentage of note-taking use (24 %) may corroborate the extent to which learners notice new words as they appear to be motivated and interested in writing down vocabulary items. Finally, in terms of social-discovery strategies the results show that 21 % of the learners reported using them. Again if social-discovery strategies are contrasted with dictionary use a large difference can be noticed (21 vs. 43 %). As pointed out above, many learners seem to work on their own when meeting unknown words by looking them up in the dictionary or attempting to figure out their meaning.

7.- CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, it can be suggested that regardless of the limitations of the preliminary study, a general picture was provided about the use of vocabulary learning strategies among EFL university learners in Mexico, which shows that there is considerable use of strategies in most categories – a prerequisite for the main study in that had VLS use turned out to be universally low, there would have been doubt over the usefulness of a study pursuing a study of factors affecting such use (Scholfield, personal communication). Also most importantly, the primary objective was attained, the validation of the contents and organisation of the VLS-Q that was going to be administered for the main study.

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REFERENCES Ahmed, M. (1988) Vocabulary Learning Strategies: a Case Study of Sudanese Learners of English.

Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis. University College of North Wales Bangor.

Fan, M. (2003) Frequency of use, perceived usefulness, and actual usefulness of second language vocabulary strategies: a study of Hong Kong learners. Modern Language Journal, 87, 2, 222-241.

Gu,

Y. (2003) Vocabulary Learning Strategies Questionnaire, http://www.arts.nie.edu.sg/ell/PeterG/Personal/. Last accessed 01.08.2006

Version

5.

Gu, Y., and Johnson, R. (1996) Vocabulary learning strategies and language learning outcomes.

Language Learning, 46, 4, 643-679.

Kudo, Y. (1999) L2 vocabulary learning strategies. Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center.

University of Hawaii at Manoa, on-line document: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/NetWorks/NW14/default.html. Last accessed 24.08.2006 Marin-Marin, A. (2005) Extraversion and the Ue of Vocabulary Learning Strategies among University EFL Learners in Mexico, Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, University of Essex.

Nakamura, T. (2000) The Use of Vocabulary Learning Strategies: the Case of Japanese EFL Learners in Two Different Learning Environments. Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, University of Essex.

Nation, P. 2001. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge University Press.

Stoffer, I. (1995) University Foreign Language Students’ Choice of Vocabulary Learning Strategies as Related to Individual Difference Variables. Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, University of Alabama.

Schmitt, N. (1997) Vocabulary learning strategies. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy (Eds.) Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy. (pp. 199-227). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Young, D., and Oxford, R. (1997). A gender-related analysis of strategies used to process written input in the native language and a foreign language. Applied Language Learning, 8, 1, 4373.

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APPENDIX A VOCABULARY LEARNING STRATEGIES QUESTIONNAIREŠ Validated Version

(see endnotes at the end this Appendix

ŠAlfredo Marin-Marin

I. Dealing with unknown vocabulary Guessing 1. I check if the word looks similar to Spanish.

2. I analyse the structure of the word (i.e. prefixes: mishear and suffixes: homeless) or parts of the word (i.e. compounds: penknife).

3. I analyse the grammatical category of the word by looking at the sentence.

4. I guess the meaning of the word by its sound, i.e. I say it aloud and guess.

5. I guess the meaning by looking at the pictures accompanying the text.

6. I guess the meaning with the help of the words I know in the sentence or paragraph.

7. I guess the meaning by the topic or the situation in which the word appears.

8. I keep on reading and try to guess later on from the context.

9. I skip the word if I do not manage to guess the meaning.

Using dictionaries and other sources 10. I look up the word in an English-Spanish-English dictionary.

11. I look up the word in my electronic translator.

12. I look up the word in an English-English dictionary.

13. I look up the word on the internet if possible, (i.e. on-line dictionaries).

14. I look up the word in the dictionary and check its meaning(s).

15. I look up the word in the dictionary and check its pronunciation.

16. I look up the word in the dictionary and check its spelling.

17. I look up the word in the dictionary and check its grammatical category (i.e. if the word is a verb, noun, adjective or both a verb and noun) 18. I look up the word in the dictionary and check example sentences and/or fixed expressions.

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Asking others 19. I ask classmates, friends or relatives for a Spanish translation.

20. I ask classmates, friends or relatives for a definition in English.

21. I ask classmates, friends or relatives the spelling or pronunciation of the word.

22. I ask native speakers for a definition in English.

23. I ask native speakers for the spelling or pronunciation of the word.

24. I ask the teacher for a Spanish translation.

25. I ask the teacher for a definition in English.

26. I ask the teacher for an example sentence.

27. I ask the teacher for the spelling or pronunciation of the word.

28. I ask the teacher for the word’s use (i.e. how and when it can be used appropriately).

29. I ask the teacher for the grammar of the word, (i.e. if the verb is followed by an –ing form or to-infinitive: consider going or consider to go.

II. Taking Vocabulary Notes Places where notes are kept about new words 30. I write down information about new word in the margins of the textbook or where the word occurs.

31. I write down new words on my English notebook (i.e. the one I use for my English course or other courses).

32. I write down new words in a specific vocabulary section at the end or top of my English notebook.

33. I write down new words on my vocabulary notebook.

34. I write down new words on cards or small pieces of paper, which I carry with me.

35. I write down new words on wall charts, posters and small pieces of paper, which I stick somewhere at home.

36. I record new words on audio-cassettes.

37. I keep vocabulary notes in a computer or other electronic devices.

Kind of information recorded about new words 38. I write down new words and their Spanish translation.

39. I write down new words and their definitions in English.

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40. I write down antonyms or synonyms beside new words.

41. I write down the new word along with my own drawings or pictures.

42. I write down example sentences using the new word.

43. I write down the pronunciation of new words.

44. I write down the grammatical category of new words.

45. I write down the grammatical behaviour/pattern of the word, (i.e. depend on and not depend of).

46. I write down information about the appropriate context or situation in which the word can be used.

47. I write down the contextual reference for the new (e.g. page number, unit or lesson, film, song, etc).

Organisation of notes about new words.

48. I organise new words by unit or lesson of the textbook.

49. I classify new words into their grammatical category, (e.g. verbs in one section, nouns in another).

50. I classify new words by meaning groups, (e.g. animals, verbs involving motion).

51. I organise new words by alphabetical order or sections, (i.e. words beginning with A in one section, with B etc).

52. I write down new words in the order they appear.

53. I use different devices to highlight the words you consider important. (.e.g. capital letters, coloured pens or markers, asterisks, lines, etc).

III. Memorising/Retaining Vocabulary Repetition to help retain the word.

A. Modes of repetition 54. I say the word aloud several times.

55. I repeat the word silently in my mind.

56. I write the word several times.

57. I listen to the words recorded on tape.

B. What is repeated.

58. I just repeat the English word alone.

59. I repeat the word and its Spanish translation and vice versa.

60. I repeat example sentences several times.

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61. I repeat the word and its English definition.

62. I repeat the spelling of the word several times. (i.e. saying the word and spelling it aloud).

Association to help retain words.

63. I relate new words to other English words with similar sounds or spelling (e.g. link & wink, row & raw).

64. I relate the new words to antonyms or synonyms in English (e.g. wide & narrow, view & opinion).

65. I associate new words with similar words in another foreign language I have studied.

66. I associate new words with a similar word in Spanish (i.e. cognate, relation & relación).

67. I use the Keyword Method. (e.g. if I want to memorise the word ‘trigger,’ I think of a word in Spanish that sounds similar like ‘trigo;’ then I create an image of a gun covered with wheat.

68. I relate new words to words which usually go together in speech or writing (e.g. words with do and words with make).

69. I associate new words with semantically related words or group of words. (e.g. flood & water, sink & parts of the kitchen).

70. I visualise the form (spelling) of new words.

71. I associate new words with my personal experience. (e.g. fall in love).

72. I associate new words with the place I see or hear them (e.g. books, movies, songs, magazines, situations).

73. I associate new words with physical action that I do or imagine.

74. I think of prefixes and suffixes that can be attached to the new word (e.g. soft – soften softener) Further practice/consolidation of new words.

75. I quiz myself or have other quiz me on new words (e.g. practising giving meanings in all possible manners, playing memory games).

76. I use as many new words as possible my everyday conversation or when writing in English, (e.g. talking to classmates, native speakers, writing letters, diaries, etc).

77. I make up imagined conversations and stories in which I use new words.

78. I look for opportunities to encounter new words or reviewing words in English (e.g. reading magazines, watching movies, using internet, listening to the radio, etc).

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Note: Excerpts from subjects with name were taken from interviews, e.g. IV. Susan: fourth-year learner.

Excerpts with subject number were taken from the open questionnaire, e.g. L.V.2 means fifth-year learner, number 2 in the list.

Interviewer’s questions are given in [ ].

My comments on the excerpts are given in < >.

1. “Most of the words are sometimes similar to Spanish, so I can guess more or less,” (I. Ingrid). “I can guess because some words are like in Spanish, for example, cognates,” (IV. Susan).

2. “I pay attention to suffixes and prefixes and I set up a relationship with words previously learnt,” (L.V.2). “I try to guess, you know, you can see sometimes ... you can guess by looking at the word formation… I mean the stem of the word…so you can see if the word is derived from other or… is what I usually do… if I can’t, then I go to a bilingual dictionary.” (V. Adan).

3. “As we have dealt with grammar categories, I know the category, from the context I realise if it is a verb or an adjective,” (II. Jose Alberto). “On the context, I read it, I try to guess, if it’s an adverb or verb, etc,” (IV. Heriberto).

4. “… by context or sometimes by the sound… its sound… I don’t know it must be this [referring to meaning of word]” (III. Yesica).

5. “Sometimes the text in the book has photographs and I see those photographs as a strategy to guess the meaning,” (III. Abril).

6. “I read all the sentence, see the context, the words surrounding,” (II. Christian). “I read all the text or the words which are near the new word, then I have an idea about the meaning of the word,” (III. Virginia).

7. “Sometimes in the textbook the words are related to some topic,” (IV. Yadira). “I relate the word to the topic of the reading and sometimes guess the word according to the topic,” (L.II.7).

8. “I continue reading and try to guess the meaning of the word by the context. At the end if I don’t understand, I come back and look up the word in the dictionary,” (IV. Lorena).

“I continue reading and if the word appears several times and try to understand because sometimes the text gives the meaning of the word,” (L.II.37).

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9. “When reading I find many new words… what I do is to continue reading. Sometimes I ignore some unknown words, I do not stop at every new word I meet.” (II. Jose Alberto).

10. “I look up the word in the dictionary, [R: What kind of dictionary do you use, EnglishEnglish or Spanish English?] Spanish-English,” (II. Marisela).

11. “I use a translator… I have the word, the several meanings and sentences,” (V. Gaby).

12. “In first semester I used a bilingual dictionary, but this semester I find it easier to use a monolingual dictionary which gives me a wider context of the word,” (II. Jose Alberto).

13. “Sometimes I look up information on the internet and I have found lots of English dictionaries on line, e.g. www.english.town.com,” (III. Adeyanira).

14. “[What information do you look up in the dictionary?] –Spelling, I don’t know how to say that… if it is noun, verb…how I can use it, if the word has different meanings, things like that,” (III. Adeyanira).

15. “[What information do you look up in the dictionary?] –Well, the pronunciation, and many times I choose the appropriate meaning that I need because many times a single word has many meanings…, (I. Miguel).

16. “[What information do you try to find or look up in the dictionary?], -The meaning, [Only the meaning?] –Synonyms,… spelling… words related,” (II. Brenda).

17. “[What do you look up?] –The meaning. [Apart from the meaning?], -If the word is an adjective or a verb, sometimes it is a adjective or a noun, a verb…sometimes it is a verb, sometimes it is a noun…or how it works and when.” (V. Miguel).

18. “[What information do you look up, apart from meaning?] –Examples, how I can use the new word,” (Jose Antonio 502). - - “Usually, in the dictionary, after the word and the meaning are given, you can find the word in fixed phrases, I also pay attention to that,” (I. Ingrid).

19. “I look it up in the dictionary or sometimes I ask a classmate for a translation, and he doesn’t know the meaning of the word I have to ask the teacher for a translation,” (L.II.32). <L.I.15 said that she asked her father when encountering new words. Thus, it may possibly imply asking for translation as this learner is starting her first year>. Cf 23.

20. “[When you ask, for example, your classmates or teachers, what information do you ask about?] –Meanings, but by context, I don’t want them to translate the word for me in Spanish, it doesn’t work for me,” (III. Carolina).

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21. <Although, not mentioned overtly, asking for pronunciation may take place when learners want to extend their knowledge of the word for productive purposes. Asking for spelling, on the other hand, may arise in listening activities or conversations. That is why this item is worth being included.> 22. “I ask my classmates sometimes, other times I ask foreign people who speak the language, because I have some friends,” (IV. Susan) <for her, foreigners are mostly Americans as she works in Summer Language School>.

23. “If I don’t get the meaning I ask my friends… I have lots of native speaker friends.” (III. Carolina). <In this case, it may be that when interacting with native speakers they may ask for definitions, spelling and pronunciation. Other students reported practising new words in conversations with native speakers of English>.

24. cf 18.

25. “Well, I ask the teacher for an explanation, in English of course,” (II. Guadalupe). <this implies that the teacher provides the learner with a definition in English.

26. “I ask the teacher to give me an example in English,” (L.I.26). “Sometimes I prefer to ask the teacher for the meaning of the word and if it is possible that the teacher could give me some examples, that would be good,” (L.IV.19). <Typically, in Mexico my students refer to examples as the meaningful sentences in which the new word is included>.

27. “[Dou you ask only for meaning?] –Sometimes I ask for the pronunciation,” (I. Miguel).

[What do you ask?] –The meaning and the pronunciation in British or American English because sometimes it is different,” (II. Roberto). <With regard to spelling, although not mentioned overtly that way, some learners reported practising spelling with friends (e.g. II. Angel), so it may be assumed that they sometimes ask teachers and classmates for that aspect>.

28. “Also if the word has several meanings, I ask the teachers in what situations I can use the word and which meaning is more appropriate,” (L.II.27).

29. “[What else do you ask about?] –and how we use the word in some sentence, maybe the… the –ing after some verbs, for example,…I don’t know,” (II. Christian).

30. “I write the word in the margins of the textbook and I underline the sentence where it is used,” L.IV.29). “When in class, if I see a new word I write down in the book, later on I write it on my notebook,” (L.III.17).

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31. “I write it in a notebook but not in a special notebook,” (L.IV.25). <It happens that sometimes learners divide their notebooks into the several subjects they take in a semester>.

32. “I use a section at the end of my notebook, like a glossary where I write down new words or difficult ones along with its meaning in Spanish,” (L.I.8). “I write down the new words on the first two lines at the top of my notebook,” (L.II.38).

33. “I write down the new word along with its Spanish translation in my vocabulary notebook,” (L.I.14). “I write down the word in a notebook specifically for vocabulary and I write down its meaning in Spanish,” (L.II.6).

34. “Sometimes I write down words on cards, on one side the word and on the other side in Spanish and I keep them with my notebook,” (L.II.5).

35. “I write the words in a big paper in front of my bed, so I can read every morning when I wake up, or maybe at night when I go to bed,” (L.IV.27). “I make a poster and write the new words in big letters and with fluorescent colours, then I put it on the wall in front of my bed,” (L.IV.21). “I write them in a piece of paper or a card and stick them near my bed, when I have nothing to do I see them and repeat them,” (L.III.35).

36. “I record my voice saying the new words,” (L.I.22). “I take the tape recorder, and in my free time, I listen to the words,” (I. Ingrid). <This is the same learner both from the Open Questionnaire and the Interview. At least one learner in each year reported using tape recorders>.

37. <Although, nobody mentioned they kept notes this way, it can be suggested that some of them may use some kind of PC organiser as they reported using web sites for learning English>.

38. “I keep a record in which I include the new word, its meaning, its Spanish equivalent, examples and the phonetics,” (L.II.16). “I write the word in English with its equivalent in Spanish, and if I can, with a sentence to see the word in context,” (L.III.7) 39. “I make a list of unknown words. I order them alphabetically, writing down the explanation in English, then I write down a sentence with the word in it. Finally, I write down the meaning in English,” (L.IV.8) “I look up the definition in a dictionary and then I write down in a notebook,” (L.V.16).

40. “I write down the new word in a space of my book with its meaning, synonym or translation,” (L.III.30). “I just write the most common synonym or I write like key or cue words,” (L.V.8). “I write down its antonym to remember the word better,” (L.III.4)

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41. “If I can, I draw the meaning of the word in the notebook or textbook,” (L.II.29). “I write down the word in the notebook, and I use some pictures,” (L.II.36).

42. “I copy examples [sentences] from the textbook, dictionary or from the board,” (L.III.25). “I write down examples using the new word,” (L.III.14) 43. “I write down the word on my notebook, beside the word, how it is pronounced and its meaning,” L.I.26).

44. “I write what part of the speech it is,” (L.V.19). “I make a few annotations…[What do you write down?] I write down the translation, in Spanish, its grammatical category,… examples,” (II. Jose Alberto).

45. “I write down the word and its meaning; I add an example of how the word is used, and if the word follows some rules I write them down and put a star,” (L.I.20) 46. “I look up the definition in English, and then I write both English and Spanish and examples of the word, the usage of the word,” (V. Brenda). <As some learners said they asked the teacher or looked up in the dictionary when and where the new word can be used, this suggests that some may write down such information somewhere>.

47. “[How do you organise your vocabulary section?] –Alphabetically… and sometimes I put the page where I found the word I don’t know,” (IV. Lorena). “[How do you organise that special notebook?] –Well, I organise it by subjects… I have 5 pages for adjectives, other (pages) for verbs, and I write the unit (of the book) where I took it,” (IV. Ixchel).

48. “I write down a list by unit,” (L.III.5). “When the exam is near (coming), I look up the vocabulary unit by unit and I repeat every word,” (III. Elsy). <It seems that the words are noted down in the order they appear in the lesson or unit of the book>.

49. “I classify the new word, I mean, if it is a noun, a verb, etc,” (L.III.2). “I write down new words in my vocabulary notebook where I write adjectives, nouns, etc., each one in its category to make it easier to remember them,” (L.II.27).

50. “I do… how do you say ‘campos semanticos’?, [semantic maps, how do you know that? –Well, when I was in primary school we did it, now I do it in English, for example, hospital: nurse…” (II. Brenda).

51. “I have a 100-page notebook and its organised in alphabetical order…a, b, c… I learned that in secondary school, the teacher asked us to keep a diary of unknown English words,” (I. Ingrid). “I read texts and highlights words I don’t know. Then I write them down alphabetically in my notebook, the I look up the meaning in English,” (IV. Veronica).

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52. “[How do you organise your vocabulary notebook?] –Well, the vocabulary is all continuous, because I think if I try to organise my notebook in alphabetical order, I think that maybe I don’t study,” (II. Christian).

53. <In this respect, learners reported using such devices to indicate that the word is new, that the word needs further checking, etc>.

54. “I write the word several times, I repeat the word aloud.” (L.III.37).

55. “I repeat the word aloud or in my mind several times,” (L.III.14). <One of the first year learner reported repeating the word mentally 30 times>.

56. “Also I have to write the word several times to remember how it is written,” (L.II.27). “I try to memorise the word by writing it many times on pieces of paper,” (L.III.38). “I write the word several times, it depends on the spelling difficulty,” (II. Alma). <Another student reported writing the word repeatedly 5 times>.

57. “I record the word and then I listen to a tape many times,” (L.V.6). “I listen first and then I repeat the word,” (L.V.5). <This involves some kind of aural repetition as they presumably listen to the tape several times>.

58. “I need to write the word several times, [How many times?] –I don’t know 4 maybe 5.

[So you don’t repeat aloud?] – Yes, I write it and I repeat it aloud. [Silently?] –Yes, also most of the time because I need to concentrate on the word,” (III. Abril).

59. “I repeat the word. [How do you repeat?] -I use two ways. I say the word once, I say the meaning, and I say the word again and the way it sounds in Spanish and I say the meaning, or sometimes I say the way it sounds in English, the way it sounds in Spanish and then the meaning.” (II. Angel) <Although a bit confusing, this suggests the learner repeats the word both in English and Spanish and vice versa>.

60. “I write down sentences using the word and I repeat them several times,” (L.I.1) 61. “I read the definitions aloud. [So the new word in sentences, not alone?] –Not alone, sentences and its meaning in English, definitions, words and definitions and examples,” (IV. Veronica).

62. “I try to spell the word many times,” (L.V.18).

63. “I relate words to words I already know, for example link, then I think about wink; similar you see, I don’t usually take notes, I just think. Then next time when I find the word wink, yes, it’s not link,” (V. Adan). <This learner said he has been successful at least in the vocabulary section of the exam>. “I try to memorise by comparing the words, for example row – raw,” (L.III.22).

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64. “[Any associations? ] –About the word, I ask my classmates to help me find synonyms, for example for wood we put forest,” (II. Angel). “ “For example, the opposites narrow and wide, I imagine a wide street and a narrow street,” (II. Brenda).

65. “I find a word and then I look for an equivalent, not in Spanish, in another language, in my case I took French… so I put the word in French or even in the same language, a synonym or something that could be a link,” (V. Adan).

66. “I try to relate the word to some other words with a close meaning in Spanish… for example, relation and its Spanish relacion,” (IV. Ixchel).

67. Suggested by P. Scholfield (Personal Communication, 2001).

68. “Also it is helpful when you take, for example a verb, let’s say make, and you put the words that can be with this verb, like make… I don’t know… make a.” (III. Jose Antonio). <Although the learner does not know the term, he was talking about collocation, which is an important aspect in vocabulary learning>.

69. “If we are talking about flood I relate it to water and disaster and others,” (III. Adeyanira). (cf II. Brenda). “Games or making groups of things, for example a group of fruits, tropical fruits, raspberry, I don’t know liche, not common fruits, strange fruits, very difficult words to learn,” (II. Roberto).

70. “The spelling always I imagine because it’s my problem, and the situation,” (II. Alma).

“Sometimes I see the word, I close my eyes and try to visualise the word. [What do you visualise, picture or the word, the letters?] –If I don’t remember the spelling, the letters, If I don’t remember the meaning, some pictures, images, something like that,” (II. Guadalupe).

71. “[Can you think about an example of how you do that] -For example, something stupid, fall in love. I have the image of someone in my mind… to remember the word I associate this with somebody I used to be in love with,” (III. Yesica). “For me, it’s just enough to associate the word with an occasion/action of my daily life to remember the word,” (L.I.16).

72. “I also sometimes relate these words to a song I have listened before,” L.IV.24). “I remember a movie that is called, I think, Before and After, I don’t remember, but I relate the meaning for I try to understand the meaning with that movie<” (V. Ana). <She said she always confuses the pair before-after, that movie>.

73. “Sometimes I use my movements to learn some new words; I try to do the action of the word,” (L.V.7). “I imagine the thing that it means, for example, hit, I imagine, well, I imagine somebody, I imagine even abstract things. (IV. Veronica)

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74. “I pay attention to suffixes and prefixes and I set up a relationship with words previously learnt,” (L.V.2).

75. “I like studying with my friend; we repeat the words, then she asks me and I answer and vice versa; it’s a funny way for doing something not very easy,” (L.IV.7). “My partner and I try to explain the words with an easy definition, hands, objects, etc.”

(L.V.8).

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“I try to use it (the word) when talking to my friends or in common situations,” (L.V.11). “I write stories by using words I want to memorise,” L.II.31). <Other learners said they chat in English on the internet; other said they practise new words in conversations with native speakers, cf. IV. Susan>.

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77. “When I am alone in my room I talk to myself; I also pray in English,” (III. Jose Antonio). <Although this learner did not mention that he invented conversations, it can be suggested that somewhat he may think about imagined conversations>.

78. “I like learning vocabulary from song lyrics; so I listen to song and I repeat the new words and I sing the song to learn them,” (L.II.18). “For me, the best way to learn new vocabulary is by reading stories in English which I find interesting, I don’t stop reading and read the stories again because I like them,” (L.II.17). <Also several learners reported using internet in English, reading newspapers, etc>.

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ACTIVITY THEORY AND SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING John R. Haught Wright State University ABSTRACT The Vygotskian framework of socially mediated cognition and learning has increasingly influenced research on teaching and learning. Known popularly as Sociocultural Theory (SCT), an increasingly important aspect has come to be known as Activity Theory (AT). This theory views learning and cognition as a complex social practice acquired through dialogic communication located within cultural and historical contexts. This essay considers some of the fundamentals of activity theory before surveying recent research in second language learning as activity. That is followed by an investigation of how this theoretical perspective might inform classroom practice and help to create an active learning environment.

Cultural-historical psychology grew out of the dissatisfaction of a group of revolutionary Soviet psychologists in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. Objecting to the Cartesian dualism embodied by behaviorism and psychoanalysis, the groups’ founder, Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934), attempted to resolve this dilemma by drawing upon Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism. The Vygotskian framework of socially mediated cognition and learning has increasingly influenced research on teaching and learning (Moll, 2001). Known popularly as sociocultural theory (SCT), this theory views learning and cognition as a complex social practice acquired through dialogic communication located within cultural and historical contexts (Kostogriz, 2000). While Vygotsky was mainly concerned with the development of the individual, his colleague Leont’ev, engaged the concept of activity when he distinguished between collective activity and individual action and their relationship within social and cultural contexts (Engestrom & Miettinen, 1999). Today Activity Theory (AT) has emerged as an important aspect of SCT. Vygotsky sought to demonstrate that mind is not in opposition to the material world, but embedded in social activities and mediated by the tools people employ in their activities. Individuals

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never simply react to the environment, but the relationship between human subject and objects of the environment is mediated by material tools and culturally created semiotic artifacts (Kostogriz, 2000). As developed by Vygotsky’s colleagues Leont’ev and Luria, perception, imagination, thinking, and emotion are not merely derived from activity, but are activities themselves (Zinchenko, 1996). Activity and cognition are inseparable and unified. Instead of the dualism of mind and action, we have a new construct of mind as action (Wertsch, 1998). AT differs from Piaget’s view of development by claiming that mind is not only formed within the context of the social environment, but arises directly through the mediation process (Lantolf, 2000). Higher mental processes arise and mind becomes a functional system when its neuro-electrical impulses are brought under control through the appropriation of cultural artifacts, especially language (Luria, 1979). Activity is not action as opposed to thought, but can be regarded as a sociocultural framework or interpretation of the events within the context of their occurrence (Kramsch, 2000).

In realizing his theoretical approach to activity, Leont’ev (1981) devised a hierarchical structure of activity that differentiates between processes at different levels. The three strata are activity, action, and operations (the latter sometimes referred to as conditions), each of which is directed at a different object and provide a different perspective on the organization of events (Wells, 1999). At the top of the hierarchy is activity, which is driven by an overall motive. Below that are actions, which are directed at specific goals. It is only through actions that activities are translated into reality (Kaptelinin, 1996). But actual behavior is manifest on the third stratum of operations. Operations are the particular means implemented in order to achieve the goals of our actions. Leont’ev (1981) further distinguished between actions as consciously attuned to goals, as opposed to operations which are often a well practiced routine and are largely unconscious and automatic in nature. In activity theory, in order to predict and understand changes in people’s behavior, it is necessary to assess the status of the behavior and try to determine if it is directed toward a motive, goal, or actual conditions. Although a set of basic rules are generally followed regardless of the motive of an activity, the actions may vary depending upon the varying goals of the participants (McCafferty, Roebuck, & Wayland, 2001).

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Thus, AT explores the expansive learning that arises from collaborative problem solving and social interaction of learners within a complex interplay of activity systems. Conflict and dissonance are an inevitable part of dialogic interaction and is the very thing that drives innovation and invention. This results in historically new activity within the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) which results in transformations of individual identity, cultural tools, and of the activity itself.

From this fertile ground the implications for second language acquisition can be considered.

TRANSFORMATION WITHIN L2 ACTIVITIES Several researchers have suggested that literacy, language, and cultural diversity issues can be analyzed through an activity theoretical approach. McCafferty (2002) examined the role of gesture in conjunction with speech in creating Zones of Proximal Development (ZPD) for second language learning and teaching. Drawing upon Newman & Holtzmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (1993) notion of interaction within the ZPD being a fundamentally revolutionary activity that transforms all the participants, McCafferty (2002) demonstrated how gesture enabled the language learner and teacher to facilitate communication and utilize elements of the setting and each other in order to transform the interactions between them. These transformations included the invention of new tools and practices, new problem solving activities, and the establishment of new social groundings. These newly invented activities reciprocally affected both learner and teacher as they moved through their original ZPD and created a new one. McCafferty suggested that L2 learners engaged in naturalistic language contexts might benefit from being made aware of the role of gesture in meaning making within the target language.

Analyzing the progress of international students in a university writing course, Nelson and Kim (2001) noted how the cultural-historical background of the students (from seven different countries) affected their motives for learning, which in turn afforded very different activity systems for each student. Drawing upon Engestromâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (1987) notion of expansive learning, they documented how some students transformed their actions and expanded into another activity. They asserted that learning activity requires students to discover the contradictions between what they are learning with what they already know. By contrasting new learning with their prior knowledge and

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practice, they may transcend the classroom context and expand and transfer their learning into the societal world. They differentiated between genuine learning activities and ‘mere school-going activities’, or the routines of the classroom. They believed that AT could help us to determine which is taking place within the classroom by analyzing the transformation of students’ actions and understandings.

Using the written recall protocols of second language learners, Roebuck (2000) demonstrated that, though learners were involved in the same task, they are each involved in a different activity. The difficulties and contradictions encountered by the learners gave rise to transformative repositioning toward their engagement with the tasks. Roebuck argued that her findings demonstrate the fallacy of treating research participants as subjects without agency. She claimed that while cause–effect models may be valid within the natural sciences, the study of human beings must account for their cultural-historical identity and agency. The goal of the researcher, she argued, was to discover, rather than predict, the nature of the participant’s activity.

In a similar vein, Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001) argued for the importance of seeing second language learners as individuals who actively engage in negotiating the terms and conditions under which they will choose to learn. They proceeded to document how the learning strategies of different language learners were largely determined by their histories, which in turn influenced their motives and goals for language learning. They argued that teachers cannot assume that all learners are there for the same reasons and that learning is about mediated participation within a community of learners. This mediation fundamentally involves how language learners negotiate their multiple identities between two (or more) languages. They contended that activity is a distributed process that must take into account the individual learner and the myriad other agencies impacting that individual’s life. They claimed that individuals’ activity systems interacting with other systems will result in different outcomes for different learners and, therefore, the entire notion of educational standardization is anathema to the theory.

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PLAY AND DRAMA WITHIN L2 ACTIVITIES Several researchers have recognized the legitimate role of play and drama as activities within language learning. Kramsch (2000), in her study of semiotic mediation with L2 writers, noted how the students constructed rhetorical roles through both spoken and written mediums which allowed them to experience themselves as private, individual as well as public, social sign makers.

By adopting narrative roles, the students came to realize that they could represent themselves in a variety of ways. These roles allowed them to appreciate the fluidity of meanings within their target language. The author recalled Vygotskyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (1989) notion of role as a social performance related concept of the dialogic creation of self. Kramsch (2000) argued that human personality is composed of the myriad different roles that get played out in dialogic situations and that making L2 students aware of these roles enhances their ability to engage in a greater variety of discursive situations. Moro (1999) referred to this as an expansion of the dialogic sphere, in which speech or writing activity creates interfaces between diverse utterances and different voices. This awareness of different discursive possibilities helps to expand the language learnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to assume different roles.

Iddings, Haught, and Devlin (2005) demonstrated how English learning children creatively utilized a variety of semiotic means to create understanding and appropriate elements of their social and cultural surroundings. Documenting the friendship of two young girls who shared little common language, the researchers showed how these children enlisted gesture, dramatic play, and collaborative art and crafts activities to mediate their friendship and creatively expand their world. The authors argued that the use of these multi-modal semiotic tools provided essential affordances and learning motivation for these young learners, and that by viewing their interactions as purposeful and intentional, we no longer characterize the language learners as deficient communicators, but recognize them as multicompetent makers and users of a variety of semiotic signs.

In his work on the role of gesture in L2 acquisition, McCafferty (2002) noted how, when interacting with native speakers, L2 learners might often feel disconnected from the situation and

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feel almost as if they were performing a role. He argued that for L2 learners the situation was very similar to the imitative role that children assume in dramatic play. The L2 learner is often largely imitating and ‘ventriloquizing’ (Bakhtin, 1981) the speech of native speakers and these imitation activities play an important role in establishing a new sense of identity within the learner’s target culture. Other researchers (Brostrom, 1999; Hakkarainen, 1999) have noted that play and imitation are important activity systems in which the participants not only appropriate the surrounding social world, but make creative and transformational changes in their relations to it. Hannikainen (2001) demonstrated the use of play among young children as an inclusionary activity that was often undertaken despite the instructional intentions of the supervising adults. Viewing language acquisition as part of the process of acquiring society (Rodriguez Rojo, 2001), L2 learners, like children, are learning to master the roles and activities they will assume in the future.

Iddings and McCafferty (2003) suggested that children may have a need to transform the institutional activity system of school through imagination in order to permit and create meaning. By drawing upon Bakhtin’s (1984) notion of carnival, Iddings and McCafferty (2003) argued that the irreverent frame of mind adopted by L2 learners in play serves as a resource of semiotic mediation through which they orient themselves to the world. Though carnival can be seen as a site of resistance, in this study the children’s interactions were humorous and playful and they enjoyed a sense of agency as they gladly assumed and transformed their social roles while attending to their ‘work’. The children creatively transformed their individual activities in response to the perceived dissonance created by the institutional system of school.

ACTIVITY THEORY AND L2 PEDAGOGY In their extensive examination of classroom cultures, Gallego and Cole (2001) noted several successful examples of activity based learning. Discussing sheltered English instruction they specifically noted how Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE) embodied the following activity based instructional features (p. 986):  Active participation – Students learn both content and language through active engagement in academic tasks related to content knowledge.

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 Social interaction – Students learn by interacting with others as they carry out collaborative activities.  Integrated oral and written language – Language processes are integrated in a variety ways for a variety of purposes, thus enabling greater opportunities for language activities.  Real books and real tasks – Students read real texts and write for useful purposes.  Background knowledge – Activities are based upon student’s prior knowledge and cultural and linguistic resources.

These attributes recognized the cultural-historical situatedness of a community of learners within an activity system. The authors also argued that this model of instruction acknowledged and welcomed the interpenetration of other activity systems, particularly the community and home.

Gallego and Cole (2001) also cited the work of Luis Moll and the Funds of Knowledge project which strived to establish strategic connections between community households and the classroom. They believed that the ultimate goal of the program was to change classroom practice.

Specifically, teachers were to use the information gained in local households to change the sorts of activities and routines available to the classroom. They noted Moll and Greenberg’s (1990) belief that if educators fail to focus on social relationships and people in activity as the unit of analysis, they will never recognize the funds of knowledge available within working class households.

Gallego and Cole (2001) concluded that an activity theoretical approach was an important resource for thinking critically and creatively about the future of education and our ability to include culturally and linguistically diverse populations.

Moll (2001) also recognized several studies that attempted to create settings or environments for teaching and learning that utilized community resources in new ways. Noting such programs as La Clase Magica and The Fifth Dimension as examples, he claimed that the emphasis of these minority student community outreach programs are theoretically inspired activity systems, which also serve as the subject of research. He argued that these programs attempt to create or reconstruct social and cultural practices whose primary goal is to transform teaching and learning activities.

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DISCUSSION A number of commonalities were noted in the above studies. Activity became the unit of analysis and the researchers utilized activity theory as a descriptive tool. What is markedly noticeable was how the researchers appeared to classify operations and attempt to ascertain what they believed to be the goal driven actions. In addition, CHAT attuned the researchersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; attention to context. Each activity is unique to the cultural historical context in which it is embedded. Context permeates every aspect of data collection and analysis.

Another common aspect was the inherent concern for social reform. Cultural psychology directs attention to reforming social institutions and societal conditions (Ratner, 1997). By analyzing the context in which activities take place, there appeared to be a natural proclivity to search for a better way. Activity theory appears to assume a critical perspective almost by default. This is largely due to the fact that CHAT acknowledges the inevitability of conflict and contradiction that arises in every activity system. Vygotsky wrote at length about the conflictual nature of learning (Kozulin, 1998), but the zone of proximal development is often characterized as an unproblematic walk down the primrose path of learning. Activity theory not only acknowledges the inevitability of contradictions, but regards them as the source of creativity and innovation.

In his prescription for schooling as a practice of dialogic inquiry, Wells (1999) argued that activity theory enabled comparisons to be made between very different practices of schooling and encouraged critical and innovative ways to teach. Positing that Engestromâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (1987) activity system model could be seen as situating the activity within a dynamic community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), he argued that discourse itself was the mediating tool-kit within this community.

Analyzing different instances of classroom discourse, Wells (1999) demonstrated how teacher response (an operation) altered classroom action (goals) in different ways. Using a model he termed Teaching as Responsive Intervention, his examples suggested how teacher response had the ability to either inhibit or extend classroom discourse. He argued that it was through the strategic use of follow-up responses that teachers have the greatest potential to transform their classrooms into communities of dialogic inquiry.

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With its emphasis upon socially collaborative meaning making, which acknowledges and draws upon studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; prior knowledge and cultural resources, AT has served as a model for a handful of successful programs that actively engage learners in hands-on cultural acquisition.

Perhaps these programs will eventually serve as models for contextually situated programs of teaching and learning that successfully buck the trend toward increasingly controlled and regimented classrooms. The contextual outlook of an activity theoretical framework appears to be of particular benefit for bicultural and language minority students, as it recognizes their diversity and backgrounds as a legitimate component of the activity system. It was interesting to note that nearly all of the extant programs cited were designed to address the needs of bicultural and at risk student populations. As research continues to demonstrate the efficacy of these models perhaps educators will recognize an opportunity for a genuine educational reform that may better reach all students.

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REFERENCES Bakhtin, M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination, four essays. Austin: University of Texas.

Brostrom, S. (1999). Drama games with 6-year-old children: Possibilities and limitations. In Y. Engestrom & R. Miettinen & R. Punamaki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 250-263). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Engestrom, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developing research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit.

Gallego, M. A., & Cole, M. (2001). Classroom cultures and cultures in the classroom. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (4th ed., pp. 951-997). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Hakkarainen, P. (1999). Play and motivation. In Y. Engestrom & R. Miettinen & R. Punamaki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 231-249). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hannikainen, M. (2001). Playful actions as a sign of togetherness in day care centres. International journal of early years education, 9(2), 125-134.

Iddings, C., Haught, J., & Devlin, R. (2005). Multi-modal re-representations of self and meaning for second language learners in English dominant classrooms. Dialogue with Bakhtin on second and foreign language learning (pp. 33-53). Mahweh, NJ: Erlbaum.

Iddings, C., McCafferty, S. (in review). Carnival: Putting a round peg in a square hole.

Kaptelinin, V. (1996). Activity theory: Implications for human-computer interactions. In B. Nardi (Ed.), Context and consciousness: Activity theory and human-computer interaction (pp. 103-116). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Kozulin, A. (1998). Psychological tools: A sociocultural approach to education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kramsch, C. (2000). Social discursive constructions of self in L2 learning. In J. P. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 133-154). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lantolf, J. P. (2000). Introducing sociocultural theory. In J. P. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 1-26). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lantolf, J. P., & Pavlenko, A. (2001). (S)econd (L)anguage (A)ctivity theory: Understanding second language learners as people. In M. P. Breen (Ed.), Learner contributions to language learning: New directions in research (pp.

141-158). Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Leont'ev, A. N. (1981). Psychology and the language learning process. Oxford: Permagon Press.

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Luria, A. R. (1979). The making of mind: A personal account of soviet psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

McCafferty, S. (2002). Gesture and creating zones of proximal development for second language learning. Modern Language Journal, 86(ii), 192-203.

McCafferty, S., Roebuck, R., & Wayland, R. (2001). Activity theory and the incidental learning of second language vocabulary. Language Awareness, 10(4), 289-294.

Moll, L. C. (2001). Through the mediation of others: Vygotskian research on teaching. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (4th ed., pp. 111-132). Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association.

Moll, L. C., & Greenberg, J. B. (1990). Creating zones of possibilities: Combining social contexts for instruction. In L. C. Moll (Ed.), Vygotsky and education: Instructional implications and applications of sociohistorical psychology (pp. 319-348). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Moro, Y. (1999). The expanded dialogic sphere: Writing activity and authoring of self in classrooms. In Y. Engestrom & R. Miettinen & R. Punamaki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 165-182). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Nelson, C. P., & Kim, M.-K. (2001). Contradictions, appropriation, and transformation: An activity theory approach to L2 writing and classroom practices. Texas papers in foreign language education, 6(1), 37-62.

Newman, F., & Holtzman, L. (1993). Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary scientist. New York: Routledge.

Ratner, C. (1997). In defense of activity theory. Culture and Psychology, 3, 211-223.

Rodriguez Rojo, R. H. (2001). Family interactions as a source of being in society: Language-games and everyday family discourse genres in language construction. In S. Chaiklin (Ed.), The theory and practice of culturalhistorical psychology (pp. 56-83). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.

Roebuck, R. (2000). Subjects speak out: How learners position themselves in a psycholinguistic task. In J. P. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 79-96). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wells, C. G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry : towards a sociocultural practice and theory of education. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zinchenko, V. P. (1996). Developing activity theory: The zone of proximal development and beyond. In B. Nardi (Ed.), Context and consciousness: Activity theory and human-computer interaction (pp. 283-324). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

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EXPLICIT VOCABULARY LEARNING AND THE PERFORMANCE OF BEGINNERS IN A BRAZILIAN UNIVERSITY EFL WRITING PROGRAM Vera Lucia Posnik Roloff Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil This paper reports on the positive results achieved in a writing course for beginners at a Brazilian university EFL undergraduate program. In this program, vocabulary acquisition plays a central role. As a result, learners must be exposed to the lexical patterns they will likely need in order to produce their own texts in English on a particular topic. This is accomplished by providing them with a selection of reading texts. Before producing a text, learners read intensively in order to learn lexical patterns from those readings. This lexical exposure is fostered by means of explicit teaching and learning ─ as opposed to incidental learning. Evidence of writing performance as a result of lexical development is presented by means of writing samples produced by beginners.

INTRODUCTION This paper reports on the results attained by college students who participated in the writing component of the undergraduate program in EFL at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR) in Curitiba, Brazil. The learning context reported here reflects the training conducted in the writing sessions designed for students who have had virtually no previous experience in writing in English. These students start the program with limited knowledge of the English language. Most of them are secondary school graduates whose experience with learning English has been, by and large, centered on grammatical syllabi with essentially no practice in communicative-based oral or writing tasks.

THE UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM IN EFL

AT

UFPR:

THE LANGUAGE-TRAINING

COMPONENT

The curriculum, of which the current language degree program in EFL is a component, was implemented in 1992 as a result of a series of concerns expressed by a growing

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number of faculty members. The discussions under way converged to two major issues, one referred to the fact that the undergraduate training program exhibited numerous problems with respect to the linguistic competence expected to be attained by the graduates, while the other, related to the first one, emerged from these graduates’ prospective insertion in the job market as English language professionals.

THE SITUATION PRIOR TO 1992 Before 1992, the language-training program consisted of four general English courses, each instructed along one school year whereby students would be taught the language by means of materials which focused on the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), with no systematic focus on any of the skills in particular. Virtually ignored were the special needs individual learners might have in relation to each of the four skills as a result of their language learning history. Throughout the program, difficulties experienced by individual learners tended to be disregarded, as classes were often rather large ─ ranging from 40 to 60 students.

This unfavorable picture led to much dissatisfaction both on the part of instructors and learners. After one or two years attending the courses, the number of dropouts would steadily increase to alarming figures while the number of learners who successfully completed the four levels would decrease each year. Examining the reasons for such negative picture, students’ loss of interest in the degree was among the most prevalent. The challenge was pressing us, practitioners, to roll up our sleeves, examine our teaching/learning context carefully, and search for solutions that might better manage the needs of our learners coupled with the expectations regarding the proficiency levels they are required to display as professionals ready for the job market.

After two years of a full agenda of discussions, the new curriculum was finally put into practice, and since then the results have been overall positive in a number of fronts. First, the dropout level has decreased significantly. Second, the level of satisfaction and confidence among students as to the new program’s response to their needs are quite encouraging. Moreover, the

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language competence level of our graduates has improved considerably thus providing them with a competitive edge in the job market.

THE NEW PROGRAM The design of the language-training component of the new curriculum is guided by a series of assumptions. The program needs to be flexible to accommodate heterogeneity related to the knowledge of English at entry level. No two students’ EFL learning background is the same. This means that their starting point in the program will not be the same, and neither will be their rate of progress in the program. Some will benefit from retaking courses; others may take advantage of a battery of exams carried out at the beginning of the program whereby students can demonstrate their oral and writing performance at progressively more difficult levels. These exams allow them to get full credit for the levels they manage to score 70 or higher, and, more importantly, redirects their studies towards obtaining credits in courses for which they have little or no experience (see a few course titles listed below).

The program1 requires four levels of oral skills training and four levels of writing training. In addition, there are a number of courses catering to reinforce learner performance in speaking and writing2 (e.g., Phonology I and II, Basic Conversation in English, Intermediate Conversation in English, Advanced Conversation in English, Topics for Debates, Syntax of the English Language I and II, Varieties of English, Discourse Analysis I and II, Applied Linguistics, among others) Due to consistent remarkable results3 obtained in national performance assessment of EFL graduates carried out by the Brazilian Ministry of Education in recent years, the academic program currently developed at UFPR has been ranked among the top in the nation.

1

Additional information on the program may be obtained with the English Language Coordinator at Universidade Federal do Paraná, Departamento de Letras Estrangeiras Modernas.

2

In addition to the language courses, the program requires several credits in British and North-American Literature. Students register for these courses after they have successfully completed the third level of writing training.

3

The undergraduate program has been rated “A” in the last four assessments conducted by the Brazilian Ministry of Education.

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THE WRITING PROGRAM AN OVERVIEW According to RAIMES (1987), there are different justifications for the inclusion of writing in EFL contexts. Writing can be an opportunity to reinforce what learners have already learned (in terms of form) when listening/speaking or through reading. In this sense, writing can be used to help learners understand and remember syntactic (grammar) and lexical (vocabulary) patterns.

Writing can be a means of training in the expression of rhetorical forms and the language that accompanies them. Rhetorical forms are definitions, descriptions, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, classifications, etc. Finally, writing can be seen as a means of encouraging authentic communication whereby the writer wants to convey some information to a reader who is interested in receiving that information (interactive writing). With some adaptation, this justification for a writing component in our program seems fit: we invite our learners to examine the interactive dimensions and the relevant implications to the act of writing, considering, in particular, their role as writers in relation to their potential reader(s) or audiences.

In addition to the assumption that writing is essentially an interactive process between writer and reader, the view of writing as a process is an appropriate one in our learning context.

Writing involves a process in which all or some of the following steps are involved: generating/gathering ideas drafting, revising, editing, and redrafting. Despite intense learnersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; efforts and engagement in the writing process, oftentimes, learners may feel bound by their limited lexical and syntactic resources impairing a natural rendition of ideas in English. That is when reading comes an important tool as it not only helps learners generate ideas on a topic, it also provides the means for expanding and systematizing the learnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lexical resources (lexical items, collocations, synonyms, etc, that occur naturally in texts). In addition to being exposed to authentic use of words in a text, a close examination of certain lexical patterns, more specifically, the repetition of some of these patterns, expose learners to lexical cohesion and its implications to text cohesion.

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WORKING WITH BEGINNERS As candidates who have been admitted to the university, the students who enter the EFL academic program at UFPR have undergone a competitive battery of exams that have covered content areas such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Geography, Portuguese Language (grammar, literature, and composition), and English (reading comprehension) along with thousands of other candidates seeking admission in Medicine, Dentistry, Engineering, among other fields. As previously stated, many of them have a limited linguistic background in English attested by a set of placement tests administered prior to the beginning of the program. The number of students who must register for beginner levels varies from year to year, but generally remains at the range of 50 to 60%. This constitutes a sizeable population of beginners who need effective instruction that will equip them with the needed linguistic tools to cope with progressively more complex oral and written interaction requirements.

THE INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAM The writing program for beginners (course title: Writing I) focuses on the development of reading and writing skills.

As far as reading is concerned, the program aims at developing reading skills in English in terms of ability to (1) understand referential content, (2) identify relations among parts of a text, (3) generate inferences from implicit content relying on linguistic context, as well as making use of applicable cognitive schemata. To attain these aims, a variety of reading techniques will be systematically trained so as to familiarize learners with factors related to reading in different ways and for different purposes, text typology, reading difficulties entailed by content [cognitive/semantic] and by form [linguistic patterns]. In addition to these techniques, learners will be instructed to identify the overall structure of a text (i.e., its macro and micro structures), and learn to recognize cohesive devices [discourse markers] that writers often use to make connections signal relationships between sentences or among larger segments of text (i.e., making a text coherent].

Finally, learners will focus on the rhetorical structure of a text by means of an analysis of the

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rhetorical acts (i.e., explaining, describing, classifying, etc) performed by the sentences that make up the text.

FOCUS ON VOCABULARY LEARNING: INCIDENTAL VERSUS INTENTIONAL LEARNING The notion that learners will acquire new vocabulary through reading many texts, i.e. â&#x20AC;&#x153;incidentallyâ&#x20AC;?, has been challenged (Huckin and Coady, 1999) by the argument that beginners lack reading ability in the second/foreign language being learned. Therefore, one cannot expect these learners to read and acquire vocabulary successfully. There is already evidence in recent studies of second language learners that an approach that combines incidental/implicit and intentional/explicit is superior to incidental vocabulary learning alone. Zimmerman (1994), for example, found that three hours a week of explicit vocabulary instruction plus some self-selected reading were more effective than reading alone. Paribakht and Wesche (1997) also found that reading plus explicit instruction led to superior gains over a period of three months.

It should be noted that the very term "incidental learning" is open to different interpretations in the literature. In fact, the last few years have seen the blurring of distinction between the incidental and intentional dichotomy. Traditional studies of incidental vocabulary learning involve learners being told just to read for comprehension, recent views of the incidental vocabulary learning concept have included more demanding tasks beyond reading such as looking up new words in dictionaries for comprehension (Laufer & Hill, 2000) and recalling and retelling what is read (Joe, 1998). Results tend to suggest that the more demanding a task is, the more vocabulary items will be learned through reading.

THE TEACHING OF VOCABULARY Focus on lexical patterns found in the selected texts is an especially rich activity in the reading component of the program. Before tackling the lexis found in texts, learners reflect on the relevance of vocabulary in reading comprehension and written expression. Next, they undergo some training on to how to learn new vocabulary not only for recognition, but also to be able to use

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it. Systematic practice is carried out on how words relate to one another [semantic fields], and, finally, they are guided on how to make proper use of a monolingual dictionary4.

The recognition of lexical patterns in reading texts demands special attention in the reading class not only for the purposes of extracting meaning from a text, but, more importantly, to be able to use certain patterns to express meaning in writing tasks. the purpose of vocabulary learning should include both remembering words and the ability to use them automatically in a wide range of language contexts when the need arises (McCarthy, 1990). Thus, we depart from the assumption that knowledge of vocabulary can be classified in two categories: an active set of words that we use confidently, and a set of receptive words that we recognize, but are not able to use with any degree of confidence (cf. Nuttall, 1996:63). When reading a text, samples of both categories will be found, and, with the help of the instructor or a dictionary, learners will gain access to receptive vocabulary that will enable them to comprehend the text. However, when having to produce a text in which they will have to use this receptive vocabulary, it will be time for the instructor to provide additional reading texts in which these patterns occur so that learners will strengthen the meaning ties across contexts, and, as a result, develop their knowledge of these patterns. The final step is to use these patterns with some measure of confidence.

The writing component for beginners presupposes the reading of a number of texts (generally one-page long) on a variety of topics (usually selected from content areas, such as education, health, consumer affairs, social relations, among others) as sources for the discussion of content, text structure, writer strategies (objectives, writer-reader relationships, etc), lexicosyntactic adequacy.

When it is time for learners to produce texts, they will start by summarizing texts that they have read. Next, they will attempt to write simple, straightforward texts on a topic [content], considering a particular purpose, in addition to making an effort to envisage a particular reader. To 4

We usually recommend that learners purchase one of the following titles:  The Collins COBUILD English Dictionary, HarperCollins;  The Cambridge International Dictionary of English, Cambridge University Press;  The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Addison-Wesley.  The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Oxford University Press.

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accomplish the task, learners will be advised to undergo all or some of the steps in the writing process, depending on their familiarity with the topic, and the linguistic demands imposed. Having completed the task, individual feedback will be provided. Each student will have his/her text discussed in light of content, text structure, writer strategies, lexical choice and syntactic adequacy.

If an additional version is warranted, the student will be instructed on how to proceed.

SAMPLES OF WRITING PRODUCED BY BEGINNERS To illustrate the writing performance of the learners, we have selected two samples of writing produced by students before and after attending the first four months of the writing program.

The students are all native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese.

SAMPLE 1 (CARLOS X) Before training (placement test) Topic The difficulties of having a job and attending college in the evening The difficulties are so many importants, because if you work all the long day, is absolutly normal you stay so tired in the evening. In the university, where pay attention is basic, sleep is the bigger mistake. After the class the problem is take the long way home, in a crowded bus, with you bag in you hand and the pain in you body, day after day. When the weekend comes, you are so tired and happy or in a night club. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the life. Tomorrow will be a new day of work and study.

After initial training Topic Crime in Curitiba Crime in Curitiba is a critical problem like in other big cities in our country. There are some kinds of crimes: robberies, thefts, murders, domestic violence, rapes and others.

But two problems are more serious than others: murders and drug traffic. Every day, we can see that in the newspaper or on the TV news. Sometimes people kill to steal and with the money they buy drugs. So the two problems become just one. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so much easy to get drugs in

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Curitiba. In almost every corner downtown we can find a drug dealer selling crack, cocaine and marijuana. The alcohol is a great reason for fights and murders. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a drug too.

These problems will only be solved through the education of young people and the punishment of the criminals.

SAMPLE 2 (RODRIGO Y) Before training (placement test) Topic The difficulties of having a job and attending college in the evening Attend college and have a job is not easy. The time is few, a big problem is how control yourself to give the same importance to both actions. In despite of this, is needed work to keep on studying cos the money spented is high.

I have been working since one year ago and studying too since August. I think is hard but no impossible, after a right time the esforces will e worthwhile.

There are difficulties in everything we do nowadays and running from they is hard conquering a good life style and economical safe. Young people need give attention to the future possibilities and didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fear responsibilities. is good have some fun in the rest moments but without forget what is the first objective.

After initial training Topic Crime in Curitiba Nowadays in Curitiba there is a lot of crime. Unemployment makes this problem increase.

Some unemployed people become drug dealers, robbers or thieves. Murders, thefts and rapes are crimes related to drug traffick and social problems.

These social problems will become worse because of the population growth.

Sometimes I hear on the news about kidnapping and terrorism in Curitiba. It will get better if we solve troubles with police corruption and education.

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REFERENCES

Huckin, T. and Coady, J. (1999) Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21: 181-193 Cambridge University Press Joe, A. (1998) What effects do text-based tasks promoting generation have on incidental vocabulary acquisition?

Applied Linguistics, 19,3(1998), 357-377 Laufer, B. and Hill, M. ( 2000) What lexical information do L2 learners select in a CALL dictionary and how does it affect word retention? Language Learning & Technology. 2:58-76.

McCarthy, M. (1990) Vocabulary. London: Oxford University Press NUTTALL, C. (1996) Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. Oxford: Heinemann.

Paribakht, S. and Wesche, M. (1997) "Vocabulary Enhancement Activities and Reading for Meaning in Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition", in James Coady & Thomas Huckin (eds.), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: A Rationale for Pedagogy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press): 174-200.

RAIMES, A. (1987) Why write? From purpose to pedagogy. English Teaching Forum, 25, 23-41.

ZIMMERMAN, C. B. (1994) Self-selected reading and interactive vocabulary instruction: Knowledge and perceptions of word learning among L2 learners. Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

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A PROPOSAL FOR THE TEACHING OF CULTURE Linda Quendoz Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM)

ABSTRACT Nowadays, because of globalisation more and more people have contact with people of other cultures so teaching culture is a necessity. The objective of this paper is to present a proposal for the teaching of L2 culture. First, I define culture as both non verbal (like symbols or gestures) and verbal (such as pragmatics). Secondly, I discuss the fact that the teacher’s origin, if he is a native or a non native speaker of the L2 culture, or students’ knowledge of the L2 community can influence their view of the other culture. Then, I review some proposals for the teaching of culture: the sociological, the anthropological, the semiological perspectives and the intercultural approach. Finally, I give examples of culture teaching.

INTRODUCTION This paper presents a proposal for the teaching of culture. First, I will define what I mean by culture. Secondly, I will discuss the influence of students and teachers on the teaching and comprehension of culture. Then, I will examine different proposals for the teaching of culture.

Finally, I will give practical ideas about the teaching of culture.

DEFINITION OF CULTURE In the past, especially at the beginning of the 20th century, culture used to mean basically teaching and learning literature and the history of the L2 country. Nowadays, what do we mean by culture? According to Bourdieu (1977, 1984), culture includes two main categories : the object representation that includes, for example, flags, symbols ; and the mental representation that includes behaviour, attitudes and values. For other authors, the main cultural categories are : products (folklore, literature, art, music,...), ideas (beliefs, values, institutions,..) and behaviour

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(habits, clothes, food, leisure, traditions,...). For Goodenough1 (1964:36) “culture is formed by everything that is needed to know and to believe to behave in an acceptable way in the eyes of those who are part of this society.” Hence, for him, culture is like knowledge but knowledge shared and negotiated among individuals. Therefore, to summarize, culture is seen as knowledge, an interpretation skill and a behaviour skill.

Another aspect included in culture is language. why ? Because the language conveys culture. Some authors like Sapir et Whorf (Sapir :1921,Whorf : 1956) go as far as saying that language is indissociable from culture and thinking. I think that for some aspects of the language that is true because the language is spoken by people and those people live in linguistic community that has a particular culture. So, is linguistic competence a cultural competence? Language is also a pragmatic skill that varies according to the culture. The communicative competence means that the situation of communication is also cultural : what can be said? when can it be said? To whom can it be said ? How can it be said?

Apart from language, there are also other aspects of culture that are not necessarily linguistics such as attitudes, gestures, values, distance (proxemy) studied by Hall (1959,1966).

Those elements are also important during the contact between different cultures. According to Hall, proxemy varies according to cultures, gestures vary and can have a different meaning. Those elements are also important during the contact between different cultures.

Therefore, if our students do not know anything about the L2 linguistic community, they can have an insufficient cultural competence and so misunderstand some signs or behave in an inadequate way. Worse, they can have a cultural shock. That is why I consider necessary to teach culture in foreign language classes. Besides, there are several other reasons why culture should be taught formally in L2 classes: students’ interest, misunderstandings, rejecting or integrating the other’s culture. Furthermore, nowadays, because of globalisation, information technology, travel and internet, contact with people of other languages and different cultures are more common. So in

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the 21st century teaching culture is a necessity, but not teaching culture as knowledge but as knowhow.

OBJECTIVES OF CULTURE TEACHING So what could be the objectives of culture teaching? According to Byram (2001: 43), it is to promote the acquisition of a cultural competence, that is, the capacity to interpret the social phenomena that students can come across during their contact with the other culture; to help students to develop flexibility to accept other interpretative systems ; to enable students to consider their own culture and their cultural practice in comparison to those of the other community; to facilitate to students a corpus of knowledge about some aspects of the other country and its cultural practice.

INFLUENCES ON CULTURE TEACHING How can culture be taught ? First, there are three very important elements that need to be taken into account and that are going to affect the process of teaching culture: the teacher, the student, the differences between the studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture and that of the language learnt.

How can the teacher influence the process of learning a culture ? The teacher is one of the main elements of this learning because he often represents for his students the model of the L2 culture. His origin is important. If the teacher is a native speaker, he will probably have an internal vision of the L2 culture. He will not be an observer but a participant. Because he has internalised his culture it will be difficult for him to be objective. Besides, he will not always be conscious of certain aspects of his culture because they are automatic or natural to him. His social background is also important because he will know well the culture of his social class but it does not mean that he knows about all the social classes that exist in his country and in other social classes, where people can have different values, ideas or behaviour. So the teacher will need to become more conscious about all these issues.

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If the teacher is a non native, his vision of the L2 culture will probably be partial but it will be more explicit. He will probably be an observer, at least at first. Depending on his observation and interpretation of the otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture he could be in favour of the L2 culture or against it, or he could be selective and retain only what he wants. In this case also his vision of the L2 culture will depend on his contact with the other community. He might generalise what he has seen or he might filter it through his own culture and misinterpret what he has seen. If his experience has been positive he will probably have a positive attitude towards the other culture and therefore transmit it to his students, but if the experience has been negative he might not want to teach the otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture because he rejects it. To know better the other culture he will need to be not only an observer but also a participant, and he will have to check the meaning of ideas, values and behaviour by talking to the members of the L2 community to evaluate his own interpretation of what he experiences or sees.

In both cases, teachers will only know part of the L2 culture. This partial knowledge will depend on the social class of the teacher or of the social class he was in touch with during his stay in the foreign country. It might generalise his experience to the complete L2 culture. For example, if he stayed in the USA, he might generalise the customs there to other English-speaking countries like Britain.

Students themselves can be influenced by their experience with the speakers of L2 language and think that these speakers reflect the culture of the L2 community as a whole. They will be also affected by their first contact with the L2 culture and will react to it depending on whether they have a positive contact or a negative contact with it. Students might not understand some of the reactions or behaviour and of course, they will be biased because they will filter their experience through their own culture and misunderstand the other culture. Obviously, the more different the L2 culture is from the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; culture, the more students are likely to have difficulties and culture shocks.

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PROPOSALS FOR THE TEACHING OF CULTURE To avoid too much subjectivity and misunderstanding, it seems necessary to me to teach some aspects of the culture in a more objective way. So, returning to the question of how to teach culture taking the previous elements into account, we can examine the three perspectives that are suggested by some authors : the sociological perspective, the anthropological perspective, the semiological perspective.

I will take Geneviève Zarateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (1986) proposal for the teaching of culture. For that we could teach culture in a sociological perspective, which would mean deal with the issue as a social phenomenon in its relations to the society as a whole. For example, give statistics to amplify the field of knowledge of the teacher as well as that of the students and discuss them. Census and specialised information could be used for this.

Another possibility would be that of anthropology, more centered on human beings than on groups, which explains the behaviour of the L2 community in general, its habits, its attitudes and its daily reality. This would give a less abstract vision of the English-speaking culture and this could be a source of motivation for the students.

One more option would be semiology, which helps to recognise, interpret, understand and relate meanings, cultural connotations carried by facts and documents of civilisation. That is teaching for example, the meaning of English or American symbols.

These three possibilities would give a wider vision to the teachers as well as to the students of the English-speaking culture. I think it is important to see the similarities between the two linguistic communities, the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; community and the L2 community, but it is essential to see the differences so that students become sensitive to the L2, also to promote tolerance and to avoid cultural shocks which often provoke the rejection of the other community. The only difficulty of these proposals could be the lack of training.

Therefore, the role of teachers should be : to develop the ability to analyse information from authentic material as well as from a face to face interaction, to develop the skills to create a

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learning for their students based on experience, negotiation and experiment (Byram 2001: 256).

Teachers should adopt the role and function of social and intercultural interpreters, no that of ambassadors (Edelhoff 1987:762). Teachers should know about pragmatics (the language used in situations) and how to avoid false interpretations. (Byram 2001:255). Byram (2001:87) suggests that teachers can combine the linguistic learning with the cultural one. But to do this the necessary conditions are : to work in the field, to live with a group culturally, to have the possibility to accumulate ideas, values and interactional knowledge to become a member culturally competent, to have a holistic approach to interpret the action, the habit to compare. Teachers should explain aspects that are different from the oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture and should not judge others.

Byram (2001) suggests also another perspective, the intercultural approach, which is based on a concept of culture that accepts that different cultures are related structurally to one another. Its objectives could be: offer new perspectives on the culture and civilisation of the country where the language learnt is spoken; promote positive attitudes towards the learning of foreign languages and towards the speakers of other languages and some understanding of other cultures and civilisations; improve the understanding of the students themselves and of their culture. (Byram and Fleming, 2001: 244-245) . He also mentions the use of ethnography and theatre to help students to be more tolerant and understand better the other culture (Byram:2001) PRACTICAL IDEAS ABOUT HOW TO TEACH CULTURE L2 Culture could be taught either in the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mother tongue or in the target language, L2. In both situations, learning speech acts and pragmatics of L2 is a good opportunity to learn the other culture. For instance, when teachers teach about greetings they can introduce when, that is in which situation, and how people greet in L2 culture. Another example is when in English we talk about expressions of time, we could talk about the importance of punctuality as a value in some English-speaking countries, for example in England and the USA.

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One way of linking culture to language I used in one of my classes was when my students were learning how to tell the time in French and I told them that the question: “Quelle heure est-il?”

(What time is it?) is often used in French to start flirting with a girl. Strangely, that day, one of my students told me that he had asked the time to a French girl who was in our campus on an exchange programme and she hadn’t answered him and had just turned round. Obviously he thought she was very rude. After I explained the other pragmatic use of asking the time, he realised that the girl thought he was chatting her up and she was not interested, that is why she reacted like that. The boy’s intention was just to ask for the time and so he was surprised and annoyed when he realised his question was taken with a different intention. Without the cultural explanation he wouldn’t have understood the girl’s reaction and would have just assumed that she was rude. Only teaching language would not have avoided this type of culture misunderstanding, but teaching culture can.

CONCLUSION In conclusion, the study of culture should integrate methods used in other fields of study such as sociology or ethnography and should be integrated to all L2 language courses in order to promote tolerance and flexibility of L2 students. Yet, teachers should be careful to respect students’ identity. Students should be able to understand L2 culture and to adapt to it without losing their own identity. I think it is better to teach culture together with language so that it does not become so theoretical and isolated. Finally, the objective of L2 culture teaching in ESL/EFL programmes should also take into account the students’ need, that is the type of contact students might have with the L2 community (professional or personal and in which context) to help them avoid misunderstandings and cultural shocks.

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REFERENCES Bourdieu, Pierre Reproduction in Education, Society, Culture, Beverly Hills, C.A : Sage, 1977 Bourdieu, Pierre Distinction : a social critique of the judgement of Taste, Cambridge, M.A, Havard University Press, 1984 Byram, Michaël Culture et éducation en langue étrangère, Didier, collection Langue et apprentissage des langues LAL, Paris, 1992 Byram, Michael and Fleming, Michael Perspectivas interculturales en el aprendizaje de idiomas, Cambridge University Press, Colección Cambridge de didáctica de lenguas, Cambridge, 2001 Beacco, Jean-Claude Les dimensions culturelles des enseignements de langue, Hachette, Paris, 2000 Damen, Louise Culture Learning : the Fifth Dimension in the Language Classroom, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, USA, 1986 Edelhoff, C. “Lehrerfortbildung und interkulturelles Lehren und Lernen im Fremspracheunterricht” in G. Baumgratz and R. Stephan (Eds) Fremsprachelernen als Beitrag zur internationalen Verständigung. Inhatliche und organisaorische Perspektiven der Lehrerfortbildung in Europa. Iudicium, Munich, 1987 Hall,

Edward T. The Silent Language, New Hall, Edward T. The Hidden Dimension, New York: Doubleday,1966

York:

Doubleday,

1959

Oliveras, Angels Hacia la competencia intercultural en el aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera, Edinumen, Madrid, 2000 Sapir, Edward El lenguaje, Fondo de Cultura Económica, México-Buenos Aires, 1956 Zarate, Geneviève Enseigner une culture étrangère, coll. “F”, Hachette, Paris, 1986

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RAISING THE STATUS OF ENGLISH TEACHING ON CAMPUS: A PLENARY PANEL Frances Boyd, Maite Mallen, and Dixie Santana Columbia University, NY, USA; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Universidad Panamericana, Guadalajara, México.

INTRODUCTION English Language Teaching (ELT) has long been a feature of campus life, both in countries where English is taught as a Second Language and in those where it is taught as a Foreign Language. Each center or program was designed to meet local needs and reflect local campus culture. Over the years, the mission of such ELT efforts has evolved and changed in many ways. This paper offers profiles of three such centers, two in Mexico and one in the US, discussing each program’s history as well as current trends and future challenges. The language centers are CELE at UNAM [Foreign Language Teaching Center at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, main campus] in Mexico City, Centro de Lenguas [Language Center] at Universidad Panamericana in Guadalajara, and the American Language Program at Columbia University in New York.

In a sense, evolution in these and other ELT programs is a natural outgrowth of the professionalization of the academic field itself. As an “emerging profession,” TESOL, or ESOL, has set standards for entry into the field and for continuing professional development; developed mechanisms for program accreditation; published journals of research and practice; spawned many professional organizations and conferences; lobbied for public awareness and funds; and, participated in other activities that define a profession and merit public recognition of and trust in its members’ knowledge, skills, and ethics. Since its inception in 2003, ANUPI [National Association of University Professors of English] has been an active part of this professionalization process, primarily in Mexico, where it was founded and is headquartered. Mainly through an annual conference and the publication of the proceedings of this meeting, ANUPI has actively pursued its

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three-part mission of improving English language teaching, promoting professional development, and supporting research. The fact that the three authors of this plenary paper originally met at ANUPI in 2003 is simply one demonstration of the organization’s viability. That meeting, and subsequent annual meetings, led us to the present collaboration.

Our three language programs share a number of similarities. None of our centers fits completely comfortably into the university setting. For one thing, we share a structural problem: not schools or departments, we are known as “centers” or “programs,” with varying amounts of financial, administrative, and intellectual autonomy. For another thing, the status of our teaching faculty is uncertain. Even if we hold doctorates, in two out of the three centers, our appointments are not of typical professorial rank. Moreover, at all three centers, many teachers work on an adjunct, or part-time, basis, with little employment security and few, if any, benefits. In this context, it does not seem accidental that our centers have not always fit comfortably into the physical plant of the university, either. At various times in our histories, facilities have been scarce, shared, and under-resourced. Thus, we can say that our language centers are on the university campuses but not exactly of them.

As members of an emerging field with teaching faculty of sometimes peripheral status, all of our language centers may be more vulnerable to the winds of personnel and policy changes at our schools than traditional departments. This very vulnerability, however, can also be a source of strength. It may lead us to be more innovative and more agile when we have to adapt. Because we have had to be nimble and quick, we have survived, grown, and even prospered in our varied milieu.

At the same time, there are differences among the three programs. As we appreciate the outsider status of each of our centers and the mindset it engenders, it is also important to note the impact of differences in institutional cultures, funding models, enrollments, and language environments. Details of these comparisons and contrasts will be summarized at the start of each program profile.

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The purpose of our plenary paper, then, is to trace the evolution of three English Language programs in three institutions of higher learning in order to identify, appreciate, and learn from the similarities and differences. We also want to explore the impact of the changes on the classroom teachers. Can the challenges and changes our programs have faced inform the administrators and teachers of other programs? Will recognition of our common challenges strengthen us and help raise our status on our individual campuses?

PROFILE OF CELE-UNAM DESCRIPTIVE FEATURES CELE (Centro de Enseñanza de Lenguas Extranjeras) at the UNAM, the largest public university in Mexico, was founded in 1966. It is a multi-faceted language center, which includes the different language departments including English, the Department of Applied Linguistics [Departamento de Linguistica Aplicada], the Teacher Diploma course [Formacion de profesores], the Exam Coordination and Certification section [Coordinacion de Evaluacion y Certificacion], and the Self-Access Center [Mediateca].

Forty years ago, we shared facilities with other schools at the UNAM. Nowadays, we occupy two blue and white stucco buildings in the Ciudad Universitaria [University City], between the Engineering School and the School of Chemistry, on this modernist-style campus designed by a team of 70 architects under the direction of Mario Pani and Enrique del Moral and built in Pedregal, an area of the city that is dotted with black volcanic rock from an ancient eruption of Xitle.

A critical part of CELE’s mission is to offer University students the opportunity to study foreign languages, which will in turn lead them to have a better academic and professional development. It all started in 1967 with 6 languages: English, Italian, French, German, Portuguese and Russian. Five more were incorporated in the 70´s: Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek and, more recently, Swedish, Korean, Catalan, and Romanian have been added. Annually, CELE has approximately 6,000 students studying English on the main campus, with a faculty of 15

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full-time and 70 part-time teachers. There are hundreds more students in the four off-campus centers. Anyone can sign up for courses at the off-campus centers, paying a per-course fee.

However, only students who are enrolled at UNAM may study at the main campus center. Here there is only a token tuition although students must purchase their textbooks and other materials.

To enter UNAM, students must score at the pre-intermediate level on the CELE placement test; to graduate, they must fulfill the requirement of their school. Most have to take a reading comprehension exam on academic texts in their field, but a few must take a four-skill proficiency exam. On average, students study four or five semesters before fulfilling their English language requirement. As is true of all UNAM schools, departments, and centers, CELE is in large part funded by the Mexican government. However, CELE-UNAM is also able to supplement its income by charging for exams that are designed and given at our Foreign Language Teaching Center and by charging for courses at the off-campus centers. Such funds may be applied to improve the Centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s facilities and resources.

HISTORY AND TRENDS In the sixties, CELE had to use borrowed classrooms, but in the 70s its first dedicated building was built. In the 80s, the Department of Applied Linguistics was created with several aims: to do research in Applied Linguistics, design language exams, and design materials and curricula.

It has also been in charge of organizing a National Conference for Foreign Language Teachers [Encuentro Nacional de Profesores] every two years, where teachers of different languages and places gather to share ideas and experiences.

The year 1980 was a milestone since both the Teacher Diploma course and the Masters program in Applied Linguistics were launched. The Diploma course has prepared teachers in the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Purepecha and Maya.

Materials design went hand in hand with teacher preparation. As a result, several four-skills textbooks as well as reading comprehension courses were developed at CELE for English, Portuguese, Italian and German during that decade.

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The 90s was the era of self-access. As learner autonomy became an important issue in the field, it had an impact on materials design, teacher/ tutor training, as well as the physical facilities.

In l995, the first Self-Access Center at the University opened its doors at CELE. Both the old and the new became part of CELE’s physical plant: we acquired Mascarones, a beautiful colonial building on Mexico-Tacuba Avenue where off-campus language courses are offered, and the Mediateca, a modern self-access facility right on campus. This led to the creation of other selfaccess centers at other UNAM schools and in some of UNAM-affiliated high schools. Four UNAM off-campus language schools have opened since 1995, three of them downtown and a fourth in Coapa, on the outskirts of town. However, real space is not enough: virtual space is also needed, especially to reach English teachers all over the country. Therefore, the design and implementation of several online courses has become one of CELE´s priorities. Actualización en Lingüística Aplicada a Distancia, or ALAD, [Distance Learning in Applied Lingustics], an in-service training course offered online, has become an interesting and enriching option for teacher development in Mexico. The implementation of online courses on teaching reading comprehension for high-school teachers is underway, and online options will surely grow in the coming years.

Designing online reading comprehension exams is another area that is being explored since one of our main functions is to certify the ability to read in a foreign language. Although it is a delicate issue because of security reasons, it is an option that we have to consider. Research is now being carried out at CELE in this area. However, its implementation will not take place until all the necessary precautions are in place.

At present, restructuring the Teacher Diploma course is an important aim. Even though the course has been updated over the years, it is being thoroughly restructured to reflect the latest research, resources, and student needs: incorporating new technologies in language classes, developing cultural awareness, and doing action research.

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IMPACT ON THE CLASSROOM TEACHER Being a foreign language teacher requires many more qualifications than it did before.

There are higher expectations for full-time teachers, such as having a Masters degree and the willingness to pursue a Doctorate. At CELE, besides the regular UNAM salary, there is a merit-pay system [estímulos], which encourage teachers to participate in many different activities: teaching different courses at different levels (language for undergraduate students, teacher training in the Diploma course, and/ or in the Masters program in Applied Linguistics), doing research, designing exams, publishing in journals, participating in national and international conferences, and taking part in committees. Although language teaching is one of the most demanding of all these activities, it is not one of the most highly ranked at evaluation time.

Higher expectations also apply to part-time teachers [profesores de asignatura], who have to be well prepared to cope with students’ current needs: using new technologies, knowing about other cultures, developing academic skills, teaching content-based courses (for example, Business English or Legal English) or preparing students for international certifications, such as TOEFLibt or IELTS. These capacities, especially the first three, are expected from most teachers, but mainly from the colleagues teaching advanced courses. These courses have been very useful for students and are highly valued by them. In fact, almost half of the present population of the English Department (1,452 out of 3,032 students) is registered in one of these courses. However, here I would like to quote Dr. Frances Boyd, who described the situation very clearly by saying that there are “rising expectations without rising compensation.” Apparently, this is one of the problems that language teachers share nowadays around the world.

FINAL REMARKS One of CELE´s priorities in this decade should be to serve the increasing population without losing quality. This will imply developing such alternatives as more online courses.

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Teaching a foreign language and fulfilling students needs have become quite a challenge.

It can sometimes be an overwhelming job. However, we, as language teachers, should never lose the joy and passion for teaching that we have shared in this conference.

PROFILE OF THE CENTRO DE IDIOMAS, UNIVERSIDAD PANAMERICANA, GUADALAJARA DESCRIPTIVE FEATURES Universidad Panamericana (UP) in Guadalajara is a small private university, with an undergraduate population of around 2500 students, divided into eleven schools. It occupies seven acres on the outskirts of the city, in what used to be someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s summer home. Some of the original structures remain, notably the Language Center itself, which is housed in what used to be a private chapel. UP is also probably the only university in the world which boasts its own bullring though it no longer functions as such. The students come mostly from the western part of the country and tend to belong to the upper middle class. There are various opportunities for student exchange programs or internships abroad. Also, the University has agreements with institutions in a variety of countries, and receives between 40 and 50 foreign students annually, so English is seen by the University as more a necessity than a frill. Annually, UP has about 500 students studying English, with a faculty of 5 full-time and 25 part-time teachers.

In 1998, Panamericana was the first university in Guadalajara to establish English as a graduation requirement. At that moment, the standard was a score of 450 on the paper-based TOEFL exam. Gradually, the score requirement has been increasing. Although each school sets its own standard, most now require 550. In 2001, the language department made the decision to accept other standardized exams for accreditation. Currently, the students can prove their English proficiency with the TOEIC, IELTS, CAE, or FCE exams, as well as the TOEFL pBT or iBT. On average, students study for 80 hours for seven semesters in order to fulfill their English language proficiency requirement.

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HISTORY AND TRENDS Centro de Idiomas as such was established in 1994. There had been a previous attempt to offer language courses as an outsourced service, but this proved unsuccessful. For this new attempt, three teachers were hired and placed under the supervision of a coordinator. This coordinator had no previous experience in the teaching of languages, but she spoke English and quickly and eagerly undertook to learn about her new area of responsibility. In these days, the Language Department gave service to the University: offering courses to faculty and staff, helping with translations, and offering exam preparation to whomever required it.

In 1998, English was established as a requirement. This fit in with the University’s goals of internationalization and with the expectations it had of its students. A complex set of rules and policies was put into practice. The students were placed into eight different levels, ranging from Introductory to TOEFL. They could study anywhere they wanted to, but they were required to present final exams at the University at the end of each semester. If they passed these exams, they went on to the next level. If they did not pass the exams, they were then required to study at the University. These students are known as “obligated” students, and they had one more opportunity to pass the level exams. If they failed again, they were required to drop their university studies for one year, study English during this year, and then come back to finish their studies. The final exams were prepared by the Language Center staff, based on the syllabus followed by the Center.

In theory, requiring English is a good idea as it opens up many opportunities to the students: they have more options for researching information; they have access to study abroad or internship abroad programs; they enter the workforce more prepared; they learn how to learn languages, and so on.

In practice, however, there are many drawbacks. Some students are fully aware that English has become a real-world necessity. These students have taken English courses in the country or abroad, or have studied in bilingual schools. For them, taking and passing a proficiency

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exam is not difficult. For other students, however, English is merely a requirement of the University. These students have little motivation to learn the language. They tend not to study English, or to take courses only when obliged to do so; they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t practice the language outside of the classroom, and therefore have problems reaching the required level, and obtaining the necessary score. This is especially true of the students who enter the University and place into basic levels: there simply isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enough time for them to reach a level of English where they can do well on a proficiency exam.

Obligating these students to study at the University only exacerbated an already bad situation. The results, in terms of actual learning, were poor, which reflected badly on the Language Center. Students did not always see that there was a correlation between the amount of effort they were willing to put into their classes, and the results obtained. To make matters worse, language classes are programmed at a difficult schedule (1 to 2:15, or 2:30 to 3:45) when students have either been in class all morning and are tired, or have just come back after their lunch break and are sleepy. Universidad Panamericana students have a heavy workload, sometimes up to nine different subjects in the course of a semester. They are also expected to participate in a series of extracurricular activities, such as social service, internships, study trips, and so on, which aggravates the problem.

It became obvious that major changes had to be implemented in the Language Center.

The first of these changes was academic: the books that were being used were discarded. New books were selected that contained more challenging material, and that reflected the academic focus that the University wanted to give these courses. Personnel shifts made it possible to select, for the first time in the history of the center, a head of staff with a background in language teaching.

The previous heads had all been administrators; the new head was an academic.

This decision signaled that the University was changing its view of the Language Center.

No longer was it just a cash cow; it was now becoming a member of the academic community.

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Another situation that has helped raise the status of the Language Center in the University is its recent service to faculty members preparing papers for publication in international journals or presentations for international conferences. These faculty members --two from the School of Education and another from the School of Industrial Engineering-- have spread the word that the Center can offer assistance in reaching these professional goals.

One recent trend has also positively affected both students’ learning and the status of the Language Center: an increase in the number of international students and visiting professors that the University is receiving has necessitated the teaching of content classes in English.

With the help of the American Language Program at Columbia University in New York, the Language Center organized a seminar in teaching content courses in English. Twenty-two professors participated in the seminar, taught in January 2006. Nine professors have participated in follow-up courses. A short, informal survey revealed that students were overwhelmingly positive about content courses taught in English, their speaking and writing skills improved dramatically, and there was an 81- point average increase on the students’ TOEFL scores. Offering content courses in English gives the students a real need for the language, giving them more incentive to study. It allows the students to receive more language input, without burdening them with more class time. It also allows the University to reach its goals of internationalization. More research needs to be done on the impact of content courses through the English medium, in terms of content learning, and student identity. At first glance, however, it appears to be a means to help more students meet the language requirement.

IMPACT ON THE CLASSROOM TEACHER To be able to work at the University, teachers are required to have a teaching certificate and experience in teaching at the university level. Even though a degree is required to teach in any of the schools, exceptions are made for the Language Center. In part, this reflects the University view of the Language Center as a “service department,” on a par with the bookstore, the cafeteria,

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and the library. Salaries are lower than they are for teachers in the schools, as are professional expectations.

It is becoming increasingly clear that professionalization will have to originate from the inside out: we need to prove to the University that we are as capable as any other faculty of teaching, doing research, presenting papers, and writing for journals. We have to work on getting our degrees, with or without university support. Once we have shown that we are on the same professional level as the rest of the faculty, the University will surely begin to consider us equals.

FINAL REMARKS In short, the history of the Language Center at Universidad Panamericana has not always been smooth. The language requirement was established without much thought about how to help the students reach these goals. Throughout the years, the University has come to understand that setting a requirement implies obligations not only for the students who have to meet it but for the University as well. Steps have to be taken to ensure that the goal is achievable. For example, the individual schools have to make sure that their students are complying and have to support the Language Center policies and regulations. They have to give their students time to be able to study English, being more flexible with curricular and extra-curricular activities. They have to provide the students with more input in English.

Now that the University is beginning to realize that reaching certain goals needs a concerted effort by all the stakeholders, the future seems infinitely brighter.

PROFILE OF THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE PROGRAM, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK DESCRIPTIVE FEATURES Columbia is a large private research university located on New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Upper West Side. The offices and most classrooms of the American Language Program (ALP), are located in Lewisohn Hall, one of the original copper-topped 19th-century buildings on this quintessentially urban campus designed by the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White. Currently part

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of the School of Continuing Education, the ALP has a two-part mission: to serve the University, and to teach non-enrolled students in order to contribute to University general funds as well as support its own faculty. To serve, we test and teach English to students enrolled in many different Schools within the University. The courses include pedagogy and pronunciation for International Teaching Fellows from chemistry, economics, physics, statistics, and so on; pedagogy for ForeignLanguage Teaching Fellows in the language departments; a content-ESL â&#x20AC;&#x153;bridgeâ&#x20AC;? course for students in the School of International and Public Affairs; and part-time academic writing courses, including credit-bearing college composition courses for international students. We generate significant income by teaching full-time non-matriculated students in our Intensive English Program in which students who receive the equivalent of 18 hours of English-language classroom instruction per week. We also offer special-interest courses in Advanced Academic Preparation, Business English, Legal English, TESOL Certificate (an 18-point graduate-level program), pronunciation, fluency, and part-time integrated-skills courses on a range of proficiency levels.

The ALP has an average of 700 students per semester, 10% of whom are enrolled in Schools in the University, that is, they have formally applied and been accepted to a degree program (MA, MS or PhD). Their entrance and exit requirements are set by the Schools: Engineering, Anthropology, and so on; 90% of our students are non-enrolled. For them, there are no entrance or exit requirements. We simply administer an English Placement Test, and place each student in one of our proficiency levels, from 1 to 10. Our philosophy is summed up in the phrase: Team, Theme, and Academe. Most of our courses are taught by teams of two or three teachers who cooperate closely to plan curricula, monitor student progress, and share ideas. Our curriculum is organized around themes, which are presented in intellectually and linguistically appropriate units that integrate all language skills. And, as they study English, our learners focus on skills associated with academe, such as writing, note-taking, and critical thinking.

To carry out our academic work, we count on a core faculty of 15 full-time teachers and an adjunct faculty of 25-50. Unlike most other Intensive English Programs and academic departments, the ALP is governed by an elected Chair. Full-time and veteran part-time faculty members vote

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every three years. The Chair is advised by an Executive Committee made up of senior faculty.

Although over 40 languages are taught at Columbia, only the ALP functions as a stand-alone language program, in this case, solely dedicated to the teaching of English to non-native speakers.

All of the other languages are housed within academic departments that contextualize language study within a range of courses, including literature, comparative literature, cultural and media studies, and so on.

HISTORY AND TRENDS At Columbia, the first English for Foreigners course was offered in 1911. Our Intensive English Program was established in l954. International TESOL, our fieldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s professional organization, was founded in l966. Looking at the modern history of the American Language Program, we can say that its development parallels the emerging profession of TESOL, as well as the development of standards by three other professional organizations: the Consortium of University and College Intensive English Programs (UCIEP), the American Association of Intensive English Programs (AAIEP), and the Commission on English Language Program Accreditation (CEA). Accreditation refers to the determination of whether an institution meets a set of developed standards, so we felt it was important to be part of the process of setting as well as applying standards.

In the 60s and 70s, our faculty had MAs in English literature or foreign language but learned all of their TESOL background on the job; in the 80s and 90s, we hired more and more faculty with an MA in TESOL, especially those who were eager to professionalize the Program and develop themselves within the field. To raise the status of English Language Teaching, our strategy has been to conform to the culture of the University.

In the 70s and 80s, we had to remake ourselves in the image of the University and the professoriate. In US university culture, scholarship, teaching, and service are the main criteria for evaluation of academic careers; thus, we made it our business to be topnotch in all three areas.

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First, we had to upgrade our scholarship by pursuing doctorates, presenting papers at conferences, and publishing articles and textbooks. Teaching had always been our main concern and our main strength, but we also had to conform to the Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s standard for monitoring and improving the quality of teaching, which was to seek formal student evaluations of the faculty. Also, we needed to become more aware of and articulate about our innovations in pedagogy and materials development, that is, better able to explain and justify our approach to others on campus.

Moreover, we had to embrace service as part of our jobs: to establish and serve on ALP committees, serve on University-wide committees, and vote at Arts & Science faculty meetings. So, scholarship, teaching, and service were primary. In order to be taken seriously on our campus, we had to have credentials and professional activities mirroring those of other professors even though we did not hold the rank of professor and our program was not an official department. In addition, we began to participate actively in professional organizations in our field.

Beyond individual faculty efforts, we had to ensure job security and benefits for full-time faculty, which is about one-third of our faculty. The University had already begun phasing out tenure (lifetime employment) for language instructors, so we worked with foreign language faculty and deans to establish a career track that is parallel to tenure in the number and kinds of reviews, but emphasizes teaching and materials development over research. Finally, we always kept our money-making mission in mind by keeping costs down and enrollment up. We ran a tight ship. In the 1980s, we began our first formal recruitment trips and also began developing new courses and programs to attract more students.

Adapting to the culture of the University was our first major strategy to raise our status. The second key strategy has been adapting to the changing priorities of the University.

In the 90s, we were called upon to increase our service to enrolled University students. We began new courses, such as those for International Teaching Fellows and Foreign-language Teaching Fellows, pre-law and pre-business students. And, we even offered a pronunciation course for faculty. In addition, we began to serve on career-track promotion committees for other language departments. In adding these functions, we served the University but made little or no

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money doing so. However, we did raise our visibility on campus. More deans and department heads knew who we were and became familiar with the caliber of work we were doing.

In the first five years of the 2000s, we have been called upon to expand our service by testing and certifying all non-native-speaking enrolled students (more than 2000 annually). This policy was on the books but was not enforced until a new Dean of the Graduate School revived it.

As a consequence, we find ourselves helping certain Schools to set appropriate entrance and exit requirements, as well as adjudicating the borderline cases.

In the next few years, we will have to adapt again; we may even have to reinvent ourselves. The new Dean of the School of Continuing Education is calling upon the American Language Program to relate much more visibly and actively to the intellectual life of the University and to its mission to be an even more dynamic global community. For us, this may mean expanding involvement with new groups of enrolled students and Visiting Scholars. Very importantly, changes in the antiquated system of leaving tuition for enrolled students at their home schools may be on the horizon. As a result, the ALP may look forward to being compensated for its professional language teaching service to these students.

IMPACT ON THE CLASSROOM TEACHER In the past 40 years that constitute the modern history of the ALP, the role of the classroom teacher has changed. No longer simply a well-educated person with international interests, the faculty member must bring high-level skills and abilities to the job and a willingness to actively pursue varied avenues of professional growth.

The expectations for full-time faculty are higher than ever before. ESL teachers must have more credentials and greater interest in professional development. For Scholarship, they must be willing to pursue a doctorate and publish. For Teaching, they must have the ability and willingness to teach a wide variety of levels/skills, design and deliver specialized content-based curricula, and use technology appropriately. For Service, they must be willing to serve on ALP and University committees, evaluate peers, and do whatever the Program needs. At the same time, expectations

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for part-time faculty are also higher. And, it must be noted, these rising expectations come without rising compensation. Without adequate raises, we have to be creative in rewarding faculty.

As expectations have developed, so have systems for accountability. Students in every level are given the opportunity to evaluate their teachers in a paper-based format. The summarized data and comments are shared with the individual teachers and may carry considerable weight in the hiring and retention process.

FINAL REMARKS The greatest challenge for the American Language Program is to continue to adapt, particularly to a developing sea change in our mission: increasing demand to serve degree-seeking students and declining demand from non-enrolled Intensive English Program students. (For the ALP, this also potentially means fewer income-producing opportunities.) At the same time, it is a challenge to find and train new faculty who can adapt to this sea change.

In a recent letter to the whole community, our globally oriented President said that the University is “trying to think through globalization’s impact and opportunities.” With new internationally focused web sites, administrative positions, and units such as the Office of Global Programs, the ALP will no doubt have a role to play in the University’s expanding global initiative.

The challenge will be to keep our academic and financial obligations in balance. As computer executive John Gravois recently recommended to a large group of US academic deans: “Adapt.

Have a cause. Make money.” This has always been our way of raising our boat and keeping it afloat.

CONCLUSION In the over one hundred years of collective experience represented by these three language centers, the evolution of English Language Teaching and its increasing importance on both US and Mexican campuses is clear. Each center has seen growth, professionalization, specialization, and pressure to define its academic mission and sharpen its strategies. In its own context, each center has responded creatively and positively to pressures to improve the teaching

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and learning of languages, to assess and certify student achievement, to prepare students for internal and external standardized exams, and to make students competitive in the academic and professional worlds where English is the international language. We look forward to the challenges that society, the University, and our students will pose in the future. Moreover, it is our belief that, in a fundamental sense, our mission as language professionals is to promote international understanding, one person at a time, by educating for linguistic diversity, cultural awareness, and tolerance. In the end, the worth of our efforts as administrators and teachers must be judged in reference to the learning we have made possible for students.

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TESTING AND TEACHING THE SEMANTIC COMPONENT OF VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE James Milton Swansea University, UK In a previous visit to this conference you were kind enough to let me talk about testing vocabulary and I talked about testing vocabulary breadth, that is, in short, the number of words a learner knows. This was useful to you, I hope, not just because vocabulary is an essential part of language a foreign language and so worth testing – if you have no words in a foreign language you have no foreign language at all. And the more vocabulary you know then probably, all other things being equal, the better you will be in you foreign language. But they are also potentially useful to people at this conference because these tests are quick and easy to administer, if you do it by computer then its only a few minutes and they mark themselves, and they prove to be a good levels indicator. And where you have the need to test very large numbers of students and get them into class quickly, these qualities are immensely attractive.

But testing how many words someone can recognise, or can translate, does not tell us everything about a learner’s vocabulary. The theme of this conference is “Semantics, Pragmatics and Cultural Awareness”, and a variety of aspects of semantic knowledge can be found in vocabulary including associative meaning, stylistic and affective meaning, and collocative meaning; aspects of how language is used in order to be appropriate and correct. It contrasts with connotive meaning which is usually included within vocabulary breadth testing. In this talk, therefore, I would like to consider this aspect of vocabulary testing, not because I have easy answers to the question of how to test this knowledge, but because I think you’ll find the latest research quite interesting and insightful for your teaching. I also want to touch on a teaching method which I think will interest you and you will enjoy.

Let me start by trying to place all these different aspects of vocabulary knowledge in relation to each other. When we try to characterise a learners vocabulary knowledge we often talk

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about the lexical space. This is an entirely theoretical 3-dimensional space in which knowledge can be located.

It can be drawn up as a box so it is possible to see its three dimensional quality. This is shown in diagram 1. vocabulary breadth

fluency vocabulary depth

Diagram 1: The lexical space

On the one dimension we have vocabulary breadth, which is, very crudely, how many words you know in your foreign language. A learnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knowledge can be placed along this continuum. On the right-hand side might be people with only a few words. And on the left-hand side people with more foreign language words. The continuum is, potentially, almost infinite. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no real end to the number words you might learn in a foreign language, the complete Oxoford English Dictionary has hundreds of thousands of words in English you might learn for example. This aspect of knowledge is tested by the kind of checklist tests or by multiple-choice or translation tests where the test words are usually chosen from the most frequent words in a language because frequent words tend, and only tend, to be learned before less frequent words.

The second dimension in this 3-dimensional model is fluency. This is the ease and speed with which you can access and use the words you know. In principle, then, a learner could be placed anywhere in that two dimensional space. Our Arabic-speaking students, for example, often seem to have comparatively small vocabulary sizes but are tremendously fluent in using what they do know, they are amazingly good at holding persuasive conversations within their area of knowledge, and they might be placed somewhere to the right of the top line in the diagram. Our Japanese students, by contrast, often have very high levels of passive vocabulary knowledge, they

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know lots of words, but have difficulty accessing this knowledge. They have difficulty speaking easily and fluently and their language is often characterised by hesitation and pauses while the speaker tries to find in the depths of their memory, the words they need to use. They might be placed somewhere to the left of the arrowed line labelled breadth. I do not think we really have any accepted or well-used test of this quality of vocabulary knowledge.

The third dimension is the one we are interested in today, and this is the axis of depth of knowledge. Very broadly, this access tells us about how much a learner knows about the words they know. A good language user doesn’t just know the meaning of words, but also when and how exactly to use them to create the effect, or convey the right nuance of meaning. Let me give an example. I recall once, while I was working in the North of Nigeria that I went to work after a couple of days feeling, and looking, rather ill. I must have looked considerably better on this day because one of my Nigerian comments greeted me with the comment: “Milton, you’re looking very fat today.”

I was a bit surprised because I wasn’t looking at all fat – quite the opposite in fact. It was a perfectly formed sentence. I checked and my friend had chosen exactly the words he wanted so there was no problem with him not knowing the right word. What was going on? I had to wait until my own Hausa got rather better and I learned what to say when you meet someone getting over an illness. The problem was one of depth of knowledge, and in particular of the connotation that words can carry. My friend was translating pretty directly from his native language where you might well say something like this. The word fat carried the connotation of health and even wealth – where I used to work you showed your prosperity in the size of your waist. What was intended was a compliment, something like, “You’re looking really well today.”

Not being a very good Hausa speaker, I didn’t know this at the time. As far as I knew, being English, the word fat carried connotations of being overweight and distinctly unhealthy. The phrase my friend had used had the danger of turning from an compliment into an unintended insult.

You would have to be very careful these days to call anybody fat in English. Fortunately, because I

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was distinctly slim, even thin, at the time, and because I did not think the speaker would want to be insulting, it did not come over as an insult – merely, a bit confusing. Lexical depth, therefore, covers elements of choosing the right word from the words you know, or putting together the right word from the word parts you know.

That is a pretty vague definition, and you cannot make good tests, and therefore make good judgements, of learners’ knowledge of depth unless there is a much tighter and more precise definition and description of it. Anderson and Freebody (1981) who probably coined the term and the distinction between breadth and depth describe it as “quality … of understanding” (p 93-94) which is a good, quick characterisation but equally imprecise.

John Read (2004) makes an attempt to pin down this quality. He lists (p 211-212) 1. Precision of meaning, this is the difference between having a limited, vague idea of what a word means and having much more elaborated and specific knowledge of its meaning.

2. Comprehensive word knowledge, this is the difference between having a grasp only some of the semantic features of a word, to knowing also the orthographic, phonological, morphological, syntactic collocational and pragmatic characteristics.

3. Network knowledge, this is linking the word into the mental lexicon and into the right mental lexicon so that a word can be linked to, and distinguished from, related or similar words.

The significance of this, it seems to me, is that depth is not a single quality or characteristic in the way lexical breadth is a single quality, but it is a number of qualities. However, the final element he describes, that of the network, or a web of words, may have some useful characteristics from which a useful test can be derived. Networks tend to involve links and links can be counted. In any test you need something which can be counted so that you can form an estimate of knowledge. The networks themselves are sufficiently vague and cold, conceivably, be any of the shades of expression and meaning, desirable combinations, and the possible synonyms and antonyms which Reid describes.

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It seems to be easier to list some examples of knowledge of lexical depth, than it is to define the concept. I think there is general acceptance that lexical depth would include knowledge of idioms and collocations, referents and associations, constraints of use, knowledge of grammatical functions of a word.

Reducing the idea to a list, like this, makes the concept much more approachable. If it is difficult to address testing this kind of knowledge as a whole, then perhaps it is possible to examine the individual parts.

Top of the list of individual parts always seems to be idioms, perhaps because we acknowledge the importance of metaphor in language but also because the vivid and often humorous structures we use appear to be important features of native-like language use. From a testing point of view, there ought to be a definable number of fixed idioms, about 4000 in the Cobuild Dictionary of Idiom for example, so it becomes possible to devise a test which can characterise the whole of knowledge in this field.

One of my research students has been working on a test to try to accurately capture knowledge in the area of fixed idioms. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s used the Cobuild corpus which contains frequency information and selected 20 items from each of the 4 frequency bands they provide. The test idioms are included in a sentence of phrase for context and one word is removed and replaced by a gap. The testee has to fill the gap. Because of this requirement to generate a word, and a construct, to complete the task, it is not a passive receptive test but a productive knowledge task.

It is also very hard. Native speakers get 100% on this test, and presumably recognise almost all the idioms in the Dictionary. Bu,t generally, non-natives do not have anything like this level of knowledge.

EXAMPLE

1

Question Look at the weather. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s raining cats and...!

Answer dogs

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Learners who take this test find it extremely tough. The scores from a school, where learners from 5 different levels from intermediate to advanced were tested, show that overall surprisingly little of this corpus of idioms is known by learners even at comparatively high levels of knowledge.

TABLE But the test does seem to be working properly in that we might expect that, as learners advance and their English improves overall, the scores on the test increase.

There is also a frequency effect in this data, though you cannot see it in this diagram.

Overall, knowledge in the most frequent band (that’s the first 5 items in your test) exceeds knowledge of the next most frequent band (items 6 -10), which in turn exceeds knowledge of the third most frequent band (items 11 – 15). Knowledge is smallest in the least frequent band (items 16 – 20).

Learners at B2 level – Cambridge First Certificate or about 450 TOEFL – might recognise only nine or ten idioms of the 80 in the test. That might equate to about 400 idioms known overall which seems, at first glance, to be very little for a feature of language which is meant to be so important.

Really advanced level students – Cambridge CPE or about TOEFL 620 – know about 20 of these idioms. Very far distant from native levels of performance on the test.

Even when we tried the test on a group of teachers, who had spent periods of years in Britain and should have had considerable exposure to natural English, scores only increase to about 30 out of 80.

If this kind of knowledge is so important why do the scores appear so low overall? And what does this tell us about lexical depth?

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One of the reasons why idioms may be so little known is that, contrary to people's general perception, they are comparatively infrequent if the evidence of corpora is to be believed. If you compare the occurrence of the idioms in the Cobuild corpus against the frequency of occurrence of individual words, and I’m aware that there are methodological problems her, you get an idea of just how uncommon they can be. Actually, I think this is a fairer comparison than some researchers are prepared to give credit for, items like “the acid test” only ever occur in canonical form and might be treated as a single lexeme. But where might an idiom such as “the acid test”, which is one of the more frequent idioms in the Cobuild corpus, be placed?

TABLE Even the most frequent of idioms occurs only 2 or 3 times per ten million running words which makes this unit of language about as frequent as very infrequent words such as fusty, mien and acclivity. Moderately frequent idioms, such as to pas something with flying colours, might occur once every ten million running words. And the least frequent idioms in the dictionary, but still important enough to be included in a dictionary, might occur even less than that.

Another reason why they may not appear prominent in corpora is that many idioms are quite variable and will rarely occur in their full, canonical form. So a proverb such as, “It’s a rolling stone which gathers no moss” will rarely occur this way but will frequently be referred to through the phase “rolling stone”. The sixties rock group takes their names from the phrase, there is a music magazine called “Rolling Stone”, and so on.

In English we also like to play with these expressions. It is a way of showing off your wit and ingenuity, but it probably is not very helpful to foreign language learners. One example I remember from a joke concerned aid agencies like Oxfam making one big appeal for aid to help out in a disaster rather than making lots of small and separate appeals – it was called putting all their begs in one ask it, a play on the phrase to put all your eggs in one basket.

I suspect too, that a lot of these phrases, like the jokes we make of them, are culturally loaded. Use of these expressions shows membership of a linguistic community. This is something

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learners of a language may aspire to but do not have and it may help explain why non-native speakers find these elements of the foreign language so very difficult to get exactly right.

If I have dwelt a little on testing idioms it is because I suspect they have characteristics of a lot of the elements which we generally put under the title of lexical depth: they are quite hard to pin down, they tend to be very infrequent, they seem to work with only the more able learners of a foreign language. Let me try to show this with an example of test for another of the most common elements within the construct of lexical depth, that of knowledge of collocations.

Collocations are defined as groups of words which often occur together. In many ways words are bit like people in the way they seem to associate with each other. Some words have a small group of friends, other words, which they always associate with. Others are very gregarious and mix widely with other words. Yet other words are distinctly anti-social and do not seem to form regular patterns of association. Where words do co-occur, this is collocation. It is often thought to be a good way to test the idiomaticity of language because non-native speakers often combine words in a way that will be transparent in meaning but will ignore these associative patterns among words and will sound wrong or unnatural. Thus native speakers will say a prayer and tell a joke, but will almost never tell a prayer or say a joke, even though there is nothing wrong grammatically with these constructions and the meaning is clear. charges

patience

weight

hints

anchor

blood

Drop lose shed Henrik Gyllstad has tried to test this kind of vocabulary knowledge in two ways one of which is a matching test. The words on the left axis are usually selected for frequency, although it often quite hard to do this. And the words on the top axis are selected because they are frequent collocates of some of the words on the vertical axis. You will see that even selecting collocations by frequency he has ended up with some quite infrequent items. Learners are expected to put crosses where the words can combine and make good English.

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Gyllstad has worked only with lexical vocabulary here and this has made the items comparatively infrequent. The most frequent collocations often involve prepositions in combinations such as get off, do up, put up with. But de-lexicalised words like get and do, and function words have qualities a little like invisibility and, taken out of a context of meaning, even native speakers get confused as to whether combinations are permissible or not.

Not all of the answers are completely clear. Native speakers will fret over whether you can drop weight, for example. And you can lose an anchor, if you sail a lot and get caught in a storm.

But are these items right or wrong.

REFERENCES Anderson, R. C. and Freebody, P (1981) “Vocabulary Knowledge.” In J. T. Guthrie, (ed) Comprehension and Teaching: Research Reviews, Newmark, DE; International Reading Association. pp 77-117.

Read, J. (2004) “Plumbing the Depths: How should the construct of vocabulary knowledge be defined?” In P. Bogaards and B. Laufer (eds) Vocabulary in a Second Language. Benjamins; The Hague. pp 209-227

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PROMOTING US CULTURAL AWARENESS IN EFL THROUGH SONG M. Karen Jogan. Ph.D. Albright College, Reading PA & Jacqueline Benevento, Ed.D. Rowan University, Glassboro NJ EFL Classrooms provide rich opportunities for teachers to lead students in exploration of United States culture and history. Song is especially motivating as a cultural listening comprehension activity owing to emotional impact, poetic nature of the text, redundancies in expression and refrain, and overall patterns of rhythm and stress. Interactive tasks based on song can support the development of listening skills and prompt learners to relate the content of the song to the broader US cultural experience. After presenting a rationale grounded in TESOL standards, the authors will suggest resources and provide examples of how listening activities based on well selected songs can promote cultural awareness.

STANDARDS ADDRESSING COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL STUDIES In 2006, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. published PreK--12 English Language Proficiency Standards1 a revised edition of their 1997 ESL Standards for PreK-12 Students. The 1997 goals were reconfigured to emphasize content-based instruction as crucial to the success of the English language learner within the school setting. The language proficiency necessary for social, intercultural and instructional purposes remains as Standard 1. The remaining four standards focus on the communication of information, ideas and concepts in the core areas of language arts, mathematics, science and social studies, and were informed by national and state academic content standards The fifth standard of social studies, incorporating 1 This

is a very useful resource for the teacher, as it provides an overview of the Standards, the conceptual framework, ways to implement the Standards, and references. The manual sets forth in matrix form the grade levels, the English language proficiency standards, the language proficiency levels, sample performance indicators and selected topics for instruction in ESOL, Available from Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. Alexandria, VA (2006). www.tesol.org

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the topic of cultural perspectives and frames of reference, is especially appropriate to theme of this paper.

TESOL Standard 5: English language learners communicate information, ideas, and concepts necessary for academic success in the area of social studies.

The connection between communication, social studies, and music has been highlighted in the journal Magazine of History in its July 2005 issue “Teaching History with Music.” In this publication of the Organization of American Historians, editor Kevin Byrne states, “The need to bring history alive in our classrooms can be at once a daunting challenge and a source of immense energy. In order to accomplish that goal, should we not use every reasonable teaching tool available to us?...Listening for history is a skill we should not overlook.”

RESOURCES

FOR

TEACHING

AND

LEARNING

US

CULTURE

THROUGH

TRADITIONAL MUSIC

The use of songs as primary sources to support learning of US culture and history is not only supported by the Organization of American Historians, it is central to the mission of the Center of American Music, University of Pittsburgh. Supported with grants from the Howard Heinz Endowment, the Grable Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center of American Music provides teachers with an impressive database of traditional US music, teaching guides,

and

available

resources.

The

project

site

is

located

online

at

http://www.voicesacrosstime.org/ An era-theme grid divides traditional US songs into time eras and themes. Themes include war and peace, united/divided, work, home, moving along, and faith/ideals. This grid of songs, along with the related lesson plans and teacher resources, provides material created for and by classroom teachers. Many of the resources in Voices Across Time suggest specific songs and teaching strategies that can be implemented in the EFL classroom. One such song, an important artifact of US cultural history, is “Home on the Range.”

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Located in the grid of Voices Across Time, in the time era of 1870-1900 and in the category of Moving Along, we find "Home on the Range," the quintessential cowboy song of the settling of the West in the United States, and a prime example of American folk music. The author of the words, Dr. Brewster Higley, was a physician and a "homesteader" from the East, who accepted the government grant of land to those people who wanted to move west and build a home. Dr. Higley built a home in Kansas, the West at that time, where he wrote the words in 1873, and a friend of his later put the words to music. Words, music and suggestions for lesson plans are available on the Voices Across America web site. Printed below are the words to a song that is well known to American children.

Home on the Range Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, Where the deer and the antelope play; Where seldom is heard a discouraging word And the skies are not cloudy all day.

Home, home on the range Where the deer and the antelope play; Where seldom is heard a discouraging word And the skies are not cloudy all day.

By the time of Higley's writing, the buffalo no longer roamed in abundance, nor did the deer and the antelope play. Earlier in the 1800s, commercial businessmen had also moved out West to sell buffalo hides for leather products, and the herds were decimated. The words to "Home on the Range" are idealistic, in that Higley was reminiscing about a landscape that was no longer viable, a landscape that he held dear in his memory as the West of earlier days. Nonetheless, the song spread quickly throughout the country, thanks to settlers passing through and cowboys on the move from one ranch to another. The song was so popular that in1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 31st president of the United States, announced that it was his favorite song. "Home on the Range' is now the state song of Kansas.

By the 1930s and 1940s, the film industry had popularized cowboy life as romantic. In the movies, cowboys called each other "buckaroo." The derivation of this term remained a mystery to

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the audience, until it was realized that "buckaroo" was a corruption of the word "vaquero," the term for a Mexican cowboy, who was hired by ranch owners to herd cattle ("vaca" is the Spanish word for "cow.")

Here are some questions that can be used in teaching United States culture through this song: 1. "Home on the Range" was a song advertising an idealized West to prospective homesteaders and pioneers. How do you think it appeared to people from the East?

2. What phrases paint the most vital images? What are your favorites?

3. What does it mean to "romanticize" something? What phrases seem more romantic than realistic? How did this song contribute to westward expansion?

4. Is there a song in another country's culture that you know about that has a similar theme?

The teacher can develop similar questions to teach culture with other songs, being sure to tap the affect and the higher order thinking skills of students. The song should be played and sung several times, and can be added to the song repertoire of the class just for fun at any time.

Voices Across Time suggests many other folksongs that can be added to the EFL classroom teacher’s repertoire to support learning about US culture. The site often directs the teacher to sheet music, audio tracks available for download, and instructions on how to purchase the audio as a CD. ADAPTING POPULAR MUSIC TO “LISTEN”

TO

US CULTURE

A well chosen popular song can be adapted as a listening text for EFL students. For use in the EFL classroom, the song should be clearly articulated by the singer, it should reflect cultural themes, provide a foundation for comparison and contrast between the target culture and the student’s own culture, and it should include a foundation of vocabulary and grammatical structures with which the student is familiar. Murphey (1992) found that discourse of pop songs is accessible for learners of English as a Second Language because of the repetition of high frequency words and the repetition of syntactic structures. The song presentation may be organized into the familiar

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three stages of interactive components (before listening, while listening, and after listening).

Teacher designed activities, including cloze activities as suggested by Lem (2005), can support each stage of the listening experience; well constructed activities assist the learner in interacting with song and with its cultural context. As an example, we might consider the George Benson contemporary classic, “On Broadway.” The first stanza follows: They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway They say there’s always magic in the air But when you’re walking down the street And you ain’t got enough to eat The glitter rubs right off and you’re nowhere In adapting this song to help students “listen” to US culture, the teacher prepares tasks in seven steps, adapted from Glisan (1988).

STEP 1: PREVIEW Preview questions to the student might include the following: 

Think about the title, “On Broadway.”



What do you think this song is about?



What do you know about Broadway?

The preview might also include pictures of Broadway, a discussion of the theater district in New York City, and discussion of why people seek fame and fortune by going to New York City.

STEP 2: LISTEN FOR MAIN IDEA The teacher plays the first stanza, and asks students to identify information: 

What is one thing you heard about?



What information is in the first stanza? (when, where, who)

STEP 3: IDENTIFY DETAILS/

INTRODUCE NEW VOCABULARY

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After having listened for some general information, the students might focus on details.

The teacher identifies new terms that might need further explanation. In the example provided, terms such as neon lights and glitter might be illustrated to enhance student understanding.

Phrases including slang, such as ain’t can be paraphrased with standard English. After new vocabulary and details are presented in the first stanza, the teacher helps students identify details in the subsequent stanzas of the song.

Step 4: Organize For this step, the teacher provides students with a worksheet or overhead that includes the lyrics for each stanza. The lyrics are out of order. Students listen to each stanza and correctly order (organize) the phrases.

The glitter rubs right off and you’re nowhere They say there’s magic in the air But when you’re walking down the street They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway And you ain’t got enough to eat After completing and checking the order of the first stanza, the process can be repeated for the other stanzas in the song.

STEP 5: SUMMARIZE The information from the song can be summarized or recreated by the students in different ways. One successful strategy is to provide students with a graphic organizer that supports visual learners as they fill in key ideas and important details in the song. The student might also prepare an illustration based on one or more verses from the song. These illustrations provide for lively paired discussion and comparison of main ideas and principle themes.

Another class activity to help students summarize is through use of the Summary Pyramid (see Figure 1).

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    

Listen to the whole song Complete the summary pyramid Write the main idea Write a short summary State the impact. Why is this information interesting/important?

Figure 1: Summary Pyramid

Who/what is it about?

What happened?

When did it happen?

Where did it happen?

Why is it important?

How/why did it happen?

What are the cultural implications?

STEP 6: CONNECT MUSIC AND CULTURE In considering the cultural information in this or other songs, teachers might form small groups of students to consider questions such as: 

List three things you learned about the USA after listening to this song



What kind of person is the singer? Write 5 adjectives to describe him.



Describe the music. How is this music similar to/ different from music in your country? Consider instruments, rhythm, theme, other impressions

Additional questions serve to promote analysis of this musical text as a cultural artifact: 

What is jazz?



What instruments are in jazz music?



What makes jazz unique?

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For this particular example, the teacher can draw students to a definition of jazz, “America’s classical music.” Teacher or student investigation would point to the origin of jazz in African American spirituals, the syncretism of African and western music traditions, its characteristic improvisation, and the typical instruments including guitar, drums, harmonica, bass, and vocals. The musical selection “On Broadway” includes some of these characteristics. The traditional music of other Latin American countries, particularly Latin American music performed or influenced by Latin Americans of African heritage, can point to similarities and differences in musical traditions.

STEP 7: REACT OR CREATE In this step, the teacher poses questions or situations that inspire the student to form a personal response or reaction to the musical selection. For example, after listening to “On Broadway,” students might consider situations such as these: 

Imagine that you want to travel to the big city. What do you want to do there?

What will be the challenges? What will you do to succeed?



You are the singer. You arrived in the city six months ago. Write a personal letter to your family, telling them about your daily routine.



You are the graphic designer to promote this songwriter and his music. Design an advertisement that captures a main theme of the music.

Following the seven steps to present and discuss this or any well-selected song, students have listened for main ideas, listened to details, summarized, responded to the song in a creative way, and discussed evidence of US culture reflected in the selection.

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CONCLUSION Music provides an authentic view of culture; it is an expression of that culture’s unique perspectives. The EFL teacher can enhance cultural understanding by providing culture-specific musical texts and using them to promote careful listening, beyond simple understanding of words and phrases and toward an appreciation of the larger cultural context. And in promoting the use of music in the classroom, the EFL teacher is also engaging students in a deeper appreciation of musical tradition.

REFERENCES Benson, G. (1995). On Broadway. On The Best of George Benson [CD]. Warner Brothers Music.

Bryne,

K. B. (2005).

Listening for History.

Teaching History http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/music/byrne.html accessed January 20, 2007.

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Eken, D. K. (1996). Ideas for using songs in the English language classroom. English Teaching Forum, 34(1), 46-47. http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol34/no1/p46.htm accessed January 20, 2007.

Glisan, E. (1988). A Plan for Teaching Listening Comprehension: Adaptation of an Instructional Reading Model.

Foreign Language Annals 21(1): 9–16.

Lems, K. (2005). Using music in the adult ESL classroom. Center for Adult English Language Acquisition. http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/music.html accessed January 20, 2007.

Murphey, T. (1992).The discourse of pop songs. TESOL Quarterly, 26(4), 770-774.

Rubin, J. (1994). A Review of Second Language Listening Comprehension Research. The Modern Language Journal, (78, 2) (Summer, 1994): 199-221.

TESOL (2006). PreK–12 English Language Proficiency Standards. Alexandria VA: TESOL University of Pittsburgh, Center for American Music (2007). Voices Across Time http://www.voicesacrosstime.org/ accessed January 20, 2007.

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