9789144140391

Texts, Topics and Tasks TEACHING ENGLISH IN YEARS 4–6

BO LU N DA H L

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Art. No 36063 ISBN 978-91-44-14039-1 Second edition 2:1 © The author and Studentlitteratur 2014, 2022 studentlitteratur.se Studentlitteratur AB, Lund Design: Henrik Hast Layout: Catharina Grahn, ProduGrafia Cover design: Jens Martin Cover illustration: Shutterstock Printed by GraphyCems, Spain 2021

Contents

Acknowledgements 9 Preface 11

1. Teaching English in years 4–6: Some key factors 15 English in Swedish education 16 English in Sweden and the world 17 Sweden as a multicultural and multilingual society 19 The digitalisation of society and our lives 22 Educational ideologies 24 Theories and ideals about learning and language development 25 The relationship between research findings and teaching 32 Scientific knowledge, proven experience and evidence 34 The role of L1 38 Communicative competence 40 The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) 43 Traditions in language teaching 47 Communicative language teaching 48 The local context 52 Teachers’ beliefs and values 53 Learners, anxiety, self-confidence, effort, and motivation 55

2. The syllabus for English 61 Communication is at the heart of language development 62 The syllabus for English and consequences for teaching 64

3. Texts 83 Literacies – a diversity of texts used for different purposes 84 Multimodality and digital literacy 86 Challenges facing educators 87 Texts in the CEFR and the syllabus for English 89 Text types and genres 92 Coherence and cohesion 100 Digital reading and information literacy 104 Critical literacy 106 A task for critical reading/digital reading for years 5 and 6 109 Materials evaluation 111

4. Content: Topics/themes – culture 119 Themes/topics 119 English as a language-driven subject 121 Culture 124 Intercultural understanding, awareness, and communication 130 Assessing intercultural awareness 133 Concluding remarks 135

5. Tasks 137 The bases for English teaching 137 Tasks 139 Language activities: Exercises and tasks 143 Task design 147

Tasks and valid assessment 153 Lesson planning 157 Critique of tasks and some responses 159 Concluding remarks 160

6. Projects 163 Learner-centred approaches 163 Learner autonomy 165 Projects 167 A project in year 6 169 Concluding remarks 172

7. Words and phrases 173 The importance of words and phrases 173 Words 174 Phrases 176 Classroom English 181 Language play 184 Learning words and phrases 187 The effectiveness of different approaches 199 Words in textbooks and word activities in workbooks 200

8. Pronunciation and grammar 205 Pronunciation 205 Grammar 209

9. Listening 223 Listening as the foundation for language development 223 Listening in the syllabus for English 229

Listening strategies 230 Listening activities: different stages with different focuses 233 Assessing listening 234 Some concluding points 241

10. Reading 243 Reading different texts for different purposes and outcomes 244 Reading ability 245 Traditional and digital reading 251 Supporting reading development 256 Reading comprehension 260 Understanding advertising 266 Assessing reading 268

11. Speaking and interacting 275 Talk and conversations as social acts involving cognition 276 Speaking and interacting according to the syllabus for English 278 Building a repertoire of spoken language 282 Extending the repertoire 291 Classroom dialogue and oral feedback 295 Negotiation of meaning and tasks 298 Cooperative learning 301 Assessing speaking and discussing 303

12. Writing 307 Writing and speaking 309 Writing as a cognitive process 311 Writing as a social act 315 Writing development – language development 317 Writing frames 319

Creative writing 320 Digital storytelling 321 Book reports 322 Assessing writing 322 Feedback – assessing writing formatively 334 A summary of principles for teaching writing 341

13. “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” 343 Gail McHugh The context 343 Using literature 344 Discussing right and wrong 345 What we did 348 The conclusion and some of the results 355

14. Lizzie Zipmouth in year 5 359 Marie Ronnebäck and Sara Sallroth Björk Background 359 The novel and its links to Lgr22 359 The planning of Lizzie Zipmouth 362 References 375 Index 393

Preface

In this edition all the chapters have been revised extensively, and there are many additions, including new chapters.

Text, Topics and Tasks focuses on the teaching of English in years 4–6, and its main target audience is student teachers and teachers who focus on these school years in their education or teaching. However, due to the frequent inclusion of language development from a beginner’s perspective, a lot of the content is also relevant for K–3 teachers. In fact, a clear K–3 perspective is included in chapters 5 and 7–12.

Revised syllabuses for English came into effect from July 1, 2022, and quotes or references to the policy documents are in accordance with these changes. However, at the point of publishing this book, Lgr22 had not yet appeared in its entirety. As a consequence, quotes from the syllabus appear without page references. In addition, whenever I quote from other sections of the curriculum the page references are to the 2018 edition of Lgr11.

The book introduces and explains key theories of language acquisition, and each content area covered in the different chapters is grounded in research. Due to the complexity of language acquisition, this book combines a cognitive (psycholinguistic) way of explaining language development with social constructivist (sociocultural) ideals.

While the book provides a theory-based foundation, it also sets out to be practical. As for language teaching, it advocates 11

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clear structures, explicit models for working with genres and text types, a combination of function and form, and activities and tasks that incorporate different dimensions of language learning. It also promotes a socially supportive learning environment where pupils are guided by a sense of participation and cooperation. Clear cognitive and linguistic demands are accompanied by corresponding teacher support.

Regarding learning, the book acknowledges the importance of learner responsibility and the ideal that teaching should connect to learners’ experiences, interests and understanding.

However, the book also addresses the fact that active-learning approaches often do not amount to more than activities. For learning to occur, active learning should be scaffolded by clearly structured teaching.

The title of the book identifies three concepts that are central to language acquisition and language teaching: texts, tasks and topics. In the book, texts are viewed broadly, incorporating images and spoken language as well as different types of media texts. Most significantly, texts appear in both reception (listening and reading) and production (speaking, writing, and interacting).

They are used for different purposes and are therefore structured differently. Text types like narration, description, instruction, information, and discussion thus represent different ways of using language, and that is why they are central to our understanding of texts and how they appear in the syllabus for English.

In language education, tasks denote a certain type of language activity different from exercises. As the chapter 5 shows, the concept invites us to approach teaching based on its relationship with learning, and there are certain principled ways in which we can design and teach tasks so that pupils face different types of challenges while being given support. Furthermore, tasks provide a key to understanding what parts of an ability (e.g., reading ability) are included in the teaching, learning, and in the assessment.

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Topics are themes, and the chapter on topics promotes the idea that communication and language learning should be based on some tangible content. In the syllabus for English this content is described in the first part of the core content (Sw: centralt innehåll) as the content of communication. However, in a language-­driven subject like English, content risks becoming secondary to language use, merely functioning as a stepping-stone for language learning. When this occurs the focus is on skills, and any communication taking place will probably amount to inauthentic communication rather than meaning making.

The first chapter provides a background to the role of English as a global language. It also describes and explains changes that have taken place in language education and gives an overview of factors that impact the learning and teaching of English at the local school level. In addition, it discusses challenges language teachers face, not least connected to all the English young people are exposed to and use outside of school.

Since Swedish syllabuses should outline what to teach rather than how subjects should be taught, chapter 2 describes and discusses the syllabus for English with a focus on some possible consequences for teaching.

The third chapter is about texts and the role they play in language education. This chapter also focuses on text types, genres, media texts and materials evaluation.

The fourth chapter deals with the content of classroom communication while chapter 5 is about tasks and chapter 6 about project-based learning.

Chapter 7 deals with words and phrases, while the brief subsequent chapter concerns pronunciation and grammar.

Chapters 9–12 are about the four language abilities, listening, reading, speaking, and writing. The chapter on speaking includes interaction.

Chapter 13 contains a teacher’s account of her language ­­teaching in a year 4. The high cognitive and linguistic levels Preface � 13

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described should be understood against the background that the learners started studying English in year 1 as part of a language profile.

Chapter 14 describes how two teachers used a children’s novel in a sequence of language lessons.

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3.

Texts

DISCUSSION POINTS 1. The Swedish syllabus for English repeatedly talks about “spoken language and texts”. Does this mean that “conversations, dialogues and interviews” are not texts?

2. In media texts, verbal language in the form of listening and reading is combined with still or moving images (viewing), but in some learning materials for English, language activities are restricted to verbal language only. To what extent should language teaching also concern itself with images? If so, why?

3. In the syllabus for English, the core content for years 4–6 mentions words like “instructions”, “descriptions”, “narratives”, “songs”, “fairy tales” and “poems”. Three of them are text types and the other three genres. Which are which, and what differences are there between text types and genres? What other text types and genres can you think of?

4. The syllabus also mentions “connected speech and writing”. What does this mean?

5. The syllabus for English includes digital reading and information seeking. What are some of the possibilities and problems connected to young learners searching for, selecting, and using webbased information?

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For a long time literacy referred to the ability to read and write (UNESCO 1993). It was described as a set of discrete skills, for example, reading as a combination of decoding and comprehension. Changed reading and writing practices, largely linked to the digitalisation of our lives and an expansion of texts, mean that literacy appears in multiple forms, as literacies, often in combination with one another. Computer games combine viewing, reading, listening, and writing, while advertisements, cartoons, graphic novels, and picture books combine reading and viewing.

Story apps are a rather recent invention. They allow learners to listen while reading, and they are thus well suited for extensive reading and listening. However, the quality is very mixed. Many websites, including social networks, combine reading, listening, and viewing. Paying functions like Swish and apps for buying tickets combine reading and writing. Apps for language learning typically include reading, listening, viewing, and writing.

The changed literacy practices are influenced by, for example, cultural, economic, educational, social, societal, and political forces. Consequently, we experience a diversity of language and culture and a quickly changing media landscape where traditional formats like print-based newspapers and magazines face enormous challenges to survive (see e.g., Kress 2008; Kalantzis et al. 2016).

Here is a summary of some key tendencies in children’s media habits (Ungar och medier 2019; Ofcom 2020): ŕ Mobile phones become increasingly important, and almost all 10–12-year-olds own a smart phone. The phones are used daily for many different purposes, such as for texting, going online, watching YouTube, listening to music, and playing games. The use of mobile phones, tablets and 84 � 3. Texts

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Literacies – a diversity of texts used for different purposes

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computers is in fact so prevalent among 12-year-olds that there is not much point in distinguishing between being on-line and off-line.

Girls’ use of mobile phones differs from that of boys’.

A higher percentage of girls take photos, text, and use social media sites.

A lot of the communication is image-driven, and platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Kik, and Discord are more widely used than Facebook.

The reading of books and newspapers keeps reaching new lows among young people, and there is a particularly sharp decrease after the age of 12.

YouTube is the new TV with a majority of 8–12-yearolds using the video-sharing platform daily. Twitch is also widely used.

Boys are more into games, but girl gamers are on the increase. However, there is a difference in the choice of games between girls and boys.

Many children come across inappropriate content online, for example, hateful comments about certain groups or content of a sexual nature that make them feel uncomfortable.

Approximately 50% of 9–12-year-olds feel that their digital uses affect other activities, such as homework, negatively, and many children, particularly girls, feel that they spend too much time online.

Media habits keep changing, but one thing is clear: digital uses keep increasing while traditional forms of literacy play a smaller part in children’s spare-time activities.

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Multimodality is the term used to denote when different modes of communication appear in combination, for example, print, image (moving or still), and sound. Each mode has its specific function in the meaning making process (Kress 2010). In a picture book, print and images contribute to the overall telling of the story, but they do so in different ways. In the syllabus for English, there is a focus on the significance of print and spoken language, but given the nature of multimodality, images are equally significant. Sometimes they function as illustrations, but they often expand on the written story or tell different parts of it. Acknowledging the multimodal nature of contemporary texts means including all the modes involved in the meaning making.

Therefore, images should be included in language activities. In 2020, an interesting step in this multimodal direction was taken by the developers of the national tests for English. The speaking part of the test was based on three pictures that the pupils were asked to describe and compare.

Multimodality is often linked to new media, but picture books, comics, posters, and graphic novels, for example, demonstrate that multimodal texts can also be paper based. Similarly, dance, role-playing, reader’s theatre, drama, and oral storytelling may be regarded as live multimodal texts. After all, they make meaning by combining various modes such as gestures, space, audio, and spoken language.

From a sociocultural perspective, literacy practices refer to “activities where written language, reading, and writing are involved in some way in meaning-making” (Liberg & Säljö 2014, p. 360, my translation). Thus, these are situations where we read, write, and talk about texts but also transform something written into another mode of expression, for example, a dramatisation, digital story, blog, or podcast. However, when using any of these genres in a school setting, teachers should consider to what 86 � 3. Texts

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Multimodality and digital literacy

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extent their authenticity springs from the format or from the contexts of their use. How the genres are perceived by the pupils may also be considered (Kalantzis et al 2016). If what we call blogs or podcasts never reach further than the local classroom, we should probably label them differently.

The expansion of what it means to listen, read, speak, and write is expressed through labels like information literacy, media literacy, critical literacy, and visual literacy. Digital literacy concerns “the extent to which one is familiar with digital tools and services and has the ability to follow the digital development and its impact on one’s life” (SOU 2015:28, p. 22, my translation). According to the Swedish Digitalisation Commission, this competence includes “knowledge to search for information, communicate, interact and produce digitally”; “skills to use digital tools and services”; “understanding of the transformation that digitalisation bring about in society as well as its opportunities and and risks”; and “motivation to participate …” (ibid., p. 16, my translation). Several of these dimensions are included in the syllabus for English.

In addition to information retrieval, the revised syllabus (Skolverket 2021a) emphasises that digital tools should be used in relation to communication. For production and interaction, the core content mentions “conversations and writing for contact and communication”, and “strategies to contribute to and facilitate conversations and written interaction, also digital”.

However, as much as digital texts are natural parts of our lives, they are also fraught with challenges, not least from a language perspective.

Challenges facing educators The digitalisation and the new literacy practices create a tension between traditional practices and the new modes of expression.

On the one hand, schooling should prepare learners for what 3. Texts � 87

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lies ahead. This means adapting to changes by embracing new technologies and integrating them into existing practices. On the other hand, schooling should build on traditional modes, for example, traditional reading and existing writing formats. This tension between the new and the old poses several challenges for teachers.

First, the variety of texts is a challenge to language education.

A literate person should be able to deal with a broad range of texts and use them for different purposes and needs. Effective present-day communication expects young people to be able to understand, respond to, and express meaning through multimodal texts in different forms (Kalantzis et al 2016). While traditional means of expression exist in parallel to – and sometimes in combination with – new media, the more multimodal texts are, the more complex they are. Therefore, films are more complex multimodal texts than picture books (Cope & Kalantzis 2009). We get an idea of this increasing complexity when we listen to somebody giving a presentation, using visuals. If we try to take notes at the same time, our cognitive processing becomes stretched. This is an insight from neuroscience and cognitive load theory (Cooney Horvath 2019).

Second, the language found in multimodal texts is a challenge. Print-based or film adaptations of children’s books is a way to go, but with many picture books it is hard to achieve a balance between the cognitive level of the stories and the language level. The language may be appropriate, but the stories may be too childish. Linguistic difficulty is a bigger problem, though. The language of many films, even animated ones, is often so advanced that year-6 learners do not have any chance of understanding it.

Third, literacy is a moving target. Over the last few decades, programmes, applications, and uses have appeared, faded, or disappeared. E-mailing was for a long time the dominant form of digital communication, but its social use has been taken over by

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other forms of communicating, such as texting. Our reading and writing practices thus keep changing, and being literate means keeping up with these changes.

Fourth, the proliferation of translation tools is a challenge for teachers. Translation tools are used by many language learners, but their obvious benefits should be weighed against potential abuses. If learners rely on apps to do the thinking for them (e.g., translating a text written in another language into English), their use should be discouraged. Furthermore, effective use of Google translate and other digital translation services requires a considerable degree of language awareness.

One response to children’s increasing dependency on their mobile phones has been to impose bans and restrictions during school hours. Another response has been to juxtapose schoolbased learning with children’s spare-time activities. Linderoth (2016) points to the compensatory task of education: “When there are indications that children’s leisure reading of fiction decreases and is partly replaced by different types of technology use, a reasonable conclusion can be that the school should intensify the work of making reading experiences available rather than handing out tablets” (p. 133, my translation). But ultimately this is about balance. As mentioned in chapter 1, the National Curriculum advocates both/and thinking about approaches to learning and teaching, and the same goes for traditional and new literacies.

Texts in the CEFR and the syllabus for English Communication presupposes using texts, and texts are thus central to language use and language development. According to the Common European framework of reference for languages (CEFR), “there can […] be no act of communication through language without a text” (Council of Europe 2001, p. 93). The CEFR views 3. Texts � 89

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a text as “any piece of language, whether a spoken utterance or a piece of writing, which users/learners receive, produce or exchange” (ibid., p. 93). This definition is limited to verbal language. However, as we have seen, since multimodal texts mix modes in all sorts of combinations, there are strong arguments in favour of giving texts an extended meaning.

At a first glance, texts are defined narrowly in the syllabus for English. The core content for reception mentions “… spoken English and simple texts …” (Skolverket 2021a). However, the ensuing wordings are “texts that are procedural, descriptive and contact-making, from different media”. Other formulations suggest that texts should be viewed more broadly, and that they should incorporate not only reading and writing but also listening, speaking and viewing. The core content for listening and reading should comprise “conversations, dialogues and interviews”; “stories and other types of fiction for children and youth, also in spoken and dramatised form”; “songs”; “oral and written messages and information, for example, advertising, time-tables, and notices”; “searching for simple information from a limited selection of oral and written sources of various kinds for use in one’s own production and interaction”. In addition, learners should study “how different expressions are used to initiate and complete different types of communications and conversations”.

These examples show that “spoken English” also appears in the form of texts. This is further shown in the core content for Speaking, writing, and discussing, which mentions “presentations, instructions, messages, narratives and descriptions in connected speech and writing”. All these examples represent texts.

Texts may, furthermore, be placed along a continuum signalling degrees of closeness/distance, concretisation/abstraction and informality/formality. A text message to a close friend is informal and probably quite concrete. Despite the physical distance suggested by the medium, it is likely to be intimate in tone. A fifth grader’s face-to-face conversation with an elderly

person she has just met may be quite formal, and distant in tone despite the situation. In school, year-4 texts are usually concrete and informal in tone while some of the texts in year 6 represent a higher degree of abstraction and formality.

Activity Let us consider the following continuum: Informal spoken and written English

Formal spoken and written English

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Where would you place the following texts along the continuum? ▶ A conversation with a close friend ▶ Two friends posting a song-and-dance performance on TikTok ▶ Two pupils posting a presentation of themselves as part of an eTwinning project ▶ An individual oral presentation in front of the whole class ▶ Writing a letter to the editor of the local newspaper complaining about the quality of the school food ▶ A text message to a friend ▶ A postcard to one’s grandmother ▶ Posting a positive comment on a video clip on YouTube ▶ Video chatting with somebody unknown to you on a gaming site like Fortnite

The significance of thinking about texts along a continuum is that learners should get used to dealing with a variety of texts.

One of the overall goals for English states that pupils should “develop their ability to … adapt language for different purposes, recipients and contexts” (Skolverket 2021a). Thus, English education in school should help learners to develop English at both an informal everyday level and a more formal level. The variety of texts included in the syllabus for English shows that 3. Texts � 91

Bo Lundahl is a senior lecturer in English at Malmö University. He teaches English in the Primary Years Teacher Programme, years K–3 and 4–6.

His main teaching areas concern language development theories, language teaching, and assessment.

Texts, Topics and Tasks Teaching English in Years 4–6

The title of this book identifies three concepts that are central to language acquisition and language teaching: texts, topics, and tasks. Texts are viewed broadly, including images in addition to oral and written language.

Topics represent the content of language learning and teaching, whereas tasks are further keys to language learning and teaching. While providing a solid theoretical and research-based foundation, the book is also full of practical examples.

Texts, Topics and Tasks advocates clearly structured language teaching, explicit models for working with texts, a focus on meaningful communication, and tasks that incorporate different dimensions of language learning.

It also promotes a socially supportive learning environment, where pupils are guided by a sense of confidence, participation, and cooperation. To that end, assessment practices should serve a predominantly formative purpose.

This second edition has been revised very extensively, and several chapters are new. Recent language development research focusing on young learners has been integrated, and many of the practical examples come from Swedish classrooms for years K–3 and 4–6. The book has also been updated with respect to the revised syllabus for English and the recent national guidelines for lesson planning and assessment.

Texts, Topics and Tasks is aimed at student teachers and teachers who focus on years 4–6 in their education or teaching, but the book is also relevant to K–3 teachers.

Second edition

Art.nr 36063

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