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Dissertation |
The Application of
Selected Sociolinguistic Concepts to
Second Language Learning
Syllabus Design
by
Jay Paul Dunkelman
MA in Linguistics (TESOL)
University of Surrey
December 31, 1996
This dissertation explores how language learning in general, and syllabus design in particular, can benefit from what interactional sociolinguistics has discovered about how language is used to serve referential meanings, and how contexts determine the social, cultural and expressive meaning of utterances.
Sociolinguistics, with its emphasis on the collection and statistical analysis of data on the social and cultural aspects of language acquisition, has generally played a remote, if complementary, role in TESOL and language learning research. Although speech acts or functions are viewed by sociolinguistics as having social origins, language teachers have long assumed that patterns and rules could be discovered and taught to nonnative speakers. Given the complementary natures of sociolinguistics, which studies how people communicate, and language teaching, which seeks to teach people how to communicate, this would appear to be a reasonable assumption.
Despite its importance, the learner's lack of familiarity with the social dimension of language is evidenced in the classroom and social occurrence of learners failing to grasp the intended meaning of utterances despite possessing lexical and grammatical competence.
The standard remedy for this deficiency has historically been deductive in nature. Learners have been taught how something was done; for example, how to apologize or speak informally, and then practiced sample conversations.
Departing from this approach, the Communicative Language Teaching syllabus developed in this dissertation takes an inductive approach to inculcating sociolinguistic concepts. Crucial to this process is the study of "frames," defined here as a dynamic set of expectations about social relations based on prior experience and background knowledge, which speakers bring to a given situation. The syllabus emphasizes the study and analysis of people and situations from the perspective of framing, which is shown to be a common thread running through several interactional sociolinguistics concepts: schema, power and solidarity, alignment, footing and face. Through the use of videos and texts, the teacher guides learners to an appreciation of the social context of language, thereby developing in them more appropriate expectations, understanding and responses to utterances.
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© JAY PAUL DUNKELMAN 1997
Abstract ii
Acknowledgments 1
Chapter 1: Introduction 2
Chapter 2: Literature Review 6
2.1. Communicative Language Teaching 6
2.1.1. CLT Language Theory: Language and Society 6
2.1.1.1. The Competence-Performance Distinction 6
2.1.1.2. Speech Act Theory 10
2.1.1.3. Discourse Analysis 11
2.1.1.4. An Expanded View of Communicative Competence 12
2.1.1.5. Summary 12
2.1.2. CLT Language Learning Theory 13
2.1.3. Learner-centered Teaching 14
2.1.4. Task-based Learning 15
2.2. Interactional Sociolinguistics 16
2.2.1. Schema 16
2.2.2. Framing 18
2.2.3. Power and Solidarity 21
2.2.4. Face 22
2.2.5. The Culture-Specific Nature of Frames 24
2.3. Syllabus Design 25
2.3.1. General Principles of Syllabus Design 26
2.3.2. Product-oriented Syllabuses 27
2.3.3. Process-oriented Syllabuses 29
2.3.4. The Evolution of Perspectives on Syllabus Design 31
Chapter 3: Analysis 36
3.1. Sociolinguistics and CLT 36
3.2. Sociolinguistics and Syllabus Design: How to Get Framing into the Picture 39
Chapter 4: Application 42
4.1. Learner Profile 43
4.2. Course overview 43
4.3. Selection and Grading of Course Materials 44
4.3.1. Constraints Operating upon the Syllabus 44
4.3.2. Selection of Materials 45
4.3.3. Grading of Materials 46
4.4. Areas of Primary Focus 47
4.4.1. Language Activities 47
4.4.1.1. A syllabus for one week's activities 48
4.4.1.2. Introducing sociolinguistic topics 52
4.4.2. Language Knowledge 58
4.4.2.1. Vocabulary 58
4.4.2.2. Pronunciation 60
4.4.2.3. Grammar 64
4.4.3. Language Behavior 65
4.4.3.1. Listening 65
4.4.3.2. Speaking 66
4.4.3.3. Writing 67
4.4.3.4. Reading 69
Chapter 5: Conclusion 74
5.1. Observations 74
5.2. Summary 81
6.1. Appendix 1: Course Materials 84
Zen Golf 85
Zen Golf: Vocabulary (Part II) 91
Zen Golf: Answers 94
6.2. Appendix 2: Supplementary Materials 97
The Ten Commandments of this Course 98
Excerpts from Functions of English 99
Excerpt from A Way with Words 2 102
Hills Like White Elephants 103
Types of Humor 107
That's Not What I Meant 108
Bibliography 111
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For one may have known a thing many times and acknowledged it, one may have willed a thing many times and attempted it; and yet it is only by the deep inward movements, only by the indescribable emotions of the heart, that for the first time you are convinced that what you have known belongs to you, that no power can take it away from you; for only the truth which edifies is the truth for you.
Søren Kierkegaard
I would like to thank my teachers at the University of Surrey, in particular my dissertation tutor, Smiljka Gee, and my personal tutor, Charles Mann, for their invaluable assistance, advice and support.
I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends for reading my dissertation, and offering me their comments and advice, in particular: Adrian Clarke, Thomas Clark, Arthur Dunkelman and Michael Luwish. I am especially indebted to Joel Diamond, without whose assistance and wise counsel I would never have completed this study.
Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Celia, and my children, Shayna, Asher and Nava, for their patience and faith in me.
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Chapter 1: Introduction
This dissertation explores how language learning in general, and syllabus design in particular, can benefit from what interactional sociolinguistics has discovered about how language is used to serve referential meanings, and how contexts determine the social, cultural and expressive meaning of utterances.
Sociolinguistics, with its emphasis on the social and cultural aspects of language acquisition, has generally played a remote, if complementary, role in TESOL ("Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages") and language learning research. Sociolinguists have concentrated on collecting data using experimental techniques or surveys, and analyzing that data using statistical methods. On the other hand, although sociolinguists have viewed speech acts or functions as having social origins, language teachers long assumed that implicit in the sociolinguist's examination of these phenomena are patterns and rules that could be discovered and taught to nonnative speakers.
Despite its importance, the learner's lack of familiarity with the social dimension of language is evidenced in the all too familiar classroom and social occurrence where learners fail to grasp the intended meaning of utterances despite possessing lexical and grammatical competence. This deficit becomes painfully obvious in the case of humor.
The syllabus described in this dissertation originally began as a means to address this "deficit." In examining various approaches to filling the "sociolinguistic void," I found that the standard remedy has historically been deductive in nature. Learners have been taught how something was done, for example, how to apologize or speak informally, and then listened to and practiced sample conversations.
However, in my experience, this approach has resulted in limited success, especially in Japan, with the typical learners acquiring few, if any, of the tools necessary to grasp the socio-cultural aspects of language, despite their lexical and grammatical competence.
The reason for this absence of sociolinguistic perspective from learners' education derives, in my opinion, from the reliance in Japanese public and private schools on audiolingual and other deductive approaches to the near exclusion of other approaches.
Although often discussed in the past tense, the audiolingual approach is still used throughout the world (Morley, 1991:485), and no stronger bastion exists than in Japan. The audiolingual approach, which based its theory of language on behaviorism (Skinner, 1957), claimed that language learning consisted of habituation and conditioning without the involvement of intellectual analysis. This paradigm has remained influential in many educational settings despite the fact that it has garnered absolutely no empirical support (Bialystock & Hakuta, 1994:24).
A 1993 survey found that pronunciation textbooks in Japan " are largely or entirely behaviorist in orientation and manifest a traditional articulatory and audiolingual approach to the teaching of pronunciation" (Riney & Anderson-Hsieh, 1993:24).
Many attribute the reluctance of Japanese public and private schools to abandon the audiolingual approach to the goal attached to English study in Japan: passing the university entrance examination (See: Honna, 1995; Wada & Cominos, 1994). As is the case with other school subjects in Japan, memorization and speed are highly valued assets in the climb out of what is aptly referred to as "examination hell."
What this situation has engendered for the language teacher is often very fixed learner attitudes about what constitutes "language learning," and little or no appreciation whatsoever of the sociolinguistic aspects of language (Izumi, 1996). This unfortunate situation has had its toll on the results of English language education.
Japanese are very keen on studying English, and have more than a passing familiarity with it as a result of compulsory English language education in Japan. In 1991 94% of all 15 year-olds went to senior high school (Honna, 1995:57), meaning that nearly every child in Japan has had at least six years of compulsory English in school and, in most cases, more at the university level. Over 600,000 Japanese took the TOEIC test between 1979 and 1995, and in 1994 over 1,300,000 Japanese took the first of the semiannual Standard Test of English Proficiency (STEP) tests. The STEP test is endorsed by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (Honna, 1995:57).
And yet, although historically more Japanese take the TOEFL test than those of any other nationality do (154,609 between 1990 and 1991over twice as many as second place China), they consistently score among the lowest: 48th out of 54 in 1990~1991 (Source for the above figures: TOEFL Test and Score Manual, as quoted in Honna, 1995:58). Indeed the late Edwin O. Reischauer, former US ambassador to Japan and a leading authority on that country, listed "Japan's miserable performance in English teaching as one of the seven wonders of the world" (Honna, 1995:57).
Despite Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Culture "innovations" aimed at providing a more communicative approach to teaching English, such as the 1989 addition of the "Oral Communication Guidelines" to its "Guidelines for Study of English in the Senior High School" (Monbusho, 1989), the classroom has remained largely resistant to change. According to Izumi (1996:329), "the teaching of sociolinguistic competence has not been considered in the newly revised curriculum [i.e., the "Oral Communication Guidelines"] for English for Japanese high schools." Wada & Cominos (1994:15) observed in the "top-down" Japanese educational system "there is a gap between what the 'top' wants to achieve and the 'bottom' really wants to do."
Some have even taken the view that the lack of sociolinguistic competence accounts for the abovementioned discrepancy in Japanese test scores when compared with other countries (See: Honna, 1995; Wada & Cominos, 1994; Izumi, 1996). Nevertheless, at this point such views are still a matter of speculation.
It is not the intention of this study to evaluate the Japanese educational system. The preceding discussion of the educational setting in Japan has been brought up to provide background on the climate that has led to the creation of this syllabus, and to illustrate how current approaches in Japan do not reflect modern trends in applied linguistics to adopt more communicative, meaningful and discourse-based approaches.
The purpose of this study is to lay the theoretical and practical groundwork for an English as a second language course that incorporates selected sociolinguistic concepts in its syllabus design, and to demonstrate how learners would be better served by an inductive approach through which they can obtain a greater understanding of the interplay of meaning and social contexts as reflected in linguistic forms.
Therefore, departing from the deductive approaches which still obtain in Japan, the syllabus developed in this study takes an inductive approach to inculcating sociolinguistic concepts. Crucial to this process is the study of "frames;" defined here as dynamic sets of expectations about social relations based on prior experience and background knowledge, which speakers bring to a given situation. It will be demonstrated that the notion of framing is a common thread running several interactional sociolinguistics concepts: schema, power and solidarity, alignment, footing and face.
This syllabus differs from others in its emphasis on the study and analysis of people and situations in terms of frames. Through the use of videos and texts, learners are shown how expectations and experiences interact with utterances to produce meaning. By acquainting themselves with the social context of language through the study and recognition of frames, learners can begin to develop more appropriate expectations, understanding and responses to utterances.
This dissertation proceeds, appropriately enough, in the form of expectations derived from initial premises, i.e., the hypothetico-deductive method. Chapter 2, a review of the literature, examines the pertinent concepts in the fields of Communicative Language Teaching, interactional sociolinguistics and syllabus design. Once the significance of the parts is established in the literature review, Chapter 3 sets out to: i) justify the selection of sociolinguistic concepts as a basis for syllabus design, and ii) outline the optimal approach to designing a course syllabus integrating these concepts. Chapter 4 closely parallels Chapter 2 by demonstrating how the theoretical elements in Chapter 2 can be put to practical use in creating a specific syllabus for, in this case, advanced Japanese learners. Chapter 5 concludes this dissertation with a discussion of the importance of a sociolinguistic approach to syllabus design, other possible applications, and indicates areas for further theoretical and empirical studies.
Chapter 2: Literature Review
As Breen (1984:49) observed, every syllabus manifests "certain assumptions about language, about the psychological process of learning, and about the pedagogic and social processes within a classroom." The syllabus discussed in this dissertation is no exception. In this chapter, I shall discuss the two major theoretical influences on this syllabus: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and the notion of framing from interactional sociolinguistics.
The chapter will conclude with a discussion of syllabus design in general and the task-oriented, content-based syllabus in particular.
2.1. Communicative Language Teaching
2.1.1. CLT Language Theory: Language and Society
Communicative Language Teaching is an umbrella term for:
A theory of language teaching that starts from a communicative model of language and language use, and seeks to translate this into a design or an instructional system, for materials, for teacher and learner roles and behaviors, and for classroom activities and techniques. (Richards & Rodgers, 1986:69)
According to most authorities (Munby, 1978; Richards & Rodgers, 1986; Stern, 1983, 1992; Savignon, 1991), prominent among those who contributed to CLT language theory were: Chomsky and Widdowson in linguistics, Hymes in sociolinguistics, Halliday in functional linguistics, Austin and Searle in Speech Act Theory, and, in discourse analysis, Brown and Levinson, among others.
It is therefore fitting to begin by examining these linguists' views on language and language learning theory.
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2.1.1.1. The Competence-Performance Distinction
Language teaching was dominated during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s by American audiolingualism (AL), and situational language teaching, a British system with a different tradition, but analogous views (Morley, 1991:484; Richards & Rogers, 1986:31~43).
Audiolingualism derived its theory of language from behaviorism. B. F. Skinner (1957), one of the chief architects of behaviorism, claimed that "verbal behavior," his euphemism for language, could account for "all linguistic activities entirely within terms of overt and observable events without any appeal to an 'underlying system'." (Stern, 1983:129) Language was a matter of " habituation and conditioning without the intervention of intellectual analysis." (Stern, 1983:464)
The passing of audiolingualism and the parturition of CLT were hastened by Noam Chomsky, who in his Syntactic Structures (1957), demonstrated that behaviorist language theory could not account for one of the fundamental characteristics of language: the creativity and uniqueness of individual utterances (Munby, 1978:7; Richards & Rodgers, 1986:64).
Chomsky extended his theory in Aspects of a Theory of Syntax (1965), where he formulated the "Competence-Performance distinction." "Competence" referred to the native speaker's knowledge of the grammatical rules used to create and understand utterances (Richards, Platt & Platt, 1992:68). "Performance" referred to how native speakers use that knowledge to produce and understand utterances (Richards, Platt & Platt, 1992:269).
Based on this distinction, Chomsky set forth the notion of grammatical competence; i.e., all native speakers of a language were "ideal speakers/hearers," whose language was generated by an ideal and abstract knowledge of that language, free of the limitations of performance, such as fatigue, memory lapses, etc. Linguists could understand language through Cartesian-like introspection, consulting their own knowledge about language to construct the "universal grammar, which forms the basis of the specific grammars of all possible human language." (Fromkin & Rodman, 1988:24).
Chomsky's notions of competence and performance and universal grammar revitalized modern theoretical linguistics; however, they were eventually found lacking when called to account for the "socio-cultural dimension" of language (Munby, 1978:20).
Dell Hymes (1974, 1979) took exception to Chomsky's notion of the ideal speaker/hearer by positing that, in reality, linguists were not dealing with perfect grammatical competence in a homogenous speech community, but with relative and differential competence in a heterogeneous speech community. Contrary to Chomsky's view, grammatical competence in a language could not account for another fundamental characteristic of language: communication. "There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless." (Hymes, 1979:15)
Hymes made two contributions essential to the foundation of CLT. First, Hymes made the critical shift away from Chomsky's abstract mental structures of language to its social and cultural aspects. Secondly, Hymes (1974:16) realized that just as culture allows us to make sense of experience, so does language itself:
The communicative event is the metaphor, or perspective, basic to rendering experience intelligible.
Hymes referred to the combined aspect of communication and culture in language as "communicative competence," which meant knowledge and ability with respect to:
1. whether and (to what degree) something is formally possible;
2. whether and (to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of the means of implementation available;
3. whether and (to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated;
4. whether and (to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed, and what its doing entails. (Hymes, 1979:19)
In the same vein, Halliday and functional linguistics pursued the functional aspect of language (Halliday, 1975:11~17; 1979, 1994:108~175).
Linguistics is concerned with the description of speech acts or texts, since only through the study of language in use are all the functions of language brought into focus. (Halliday, 1970:145; italics added)
Arising from this pursuit was the notion of "cohesion;" i.e., "the interpretation of any item in the discourse requires making reference to some other item in the discourse" (Halliday and Hasan, 1976:11). Cohesion provided insight into the relationship of the elements of grammatical structure to functional meaning in discourse (Howatt, 1984:276).
Halliday elucidated three levels of linguistic analysis behavioral, semantic and grammatical and the relationship among them, which he characterized in terms of options.
In any given situation, of the many courses of action available to an individual, a large portion will involve language; for instance, an individual may opt to say or write something. Halliday called this aspect "behaviour potential."
If an individual elects to say or write something, he/she is presented with further choices at the level of semantics. This set of options Halliday called "meaning potential," and it is comprised of the set of all possible meanings an individual may convey.
Once the intended meaning is determined, the individual is then presented with further choices at the level of grammar. "Grammatical potential" refers to the many choices the language system provides the individual for expressing his/her meaning.
Halliday (1979:28) demonstrated how these three levels of analysis were related by means of an example. A boy brings home something that he has found at a building site. The mother takes one look at it and is not pleased. To express her disapproval there are several "behavior options" available to her, including nonlinguistic ones such as an angry look. If she selects a linguistic option, such as scolding the boy, there are any number of things she might say; for example, "I'll smack you if you do that again." (Halliday lists four others.)
If the mother's utterances are analyzed from a behavioral point of view, they could be viewed in terms of categories such as "emotional appeal," "warning of disapproval by the other parent," and so on. On the other hand, a purely grammatical analysis would treat the sentences as examples of particular grammatical structures. Nonetheless, analysis done in terms either of behavior or grammar alone would not reveal the relation between the two.
Behavioral analysis alone would not provide any clues to how the various behavioral categories are realized through grammar; for example, how is an "emotional appeal" expressed in English. Likewise, grammatical analysis fails to relate grammatical features to the behavioral categories they realize.
Thus the specification of the relationship between grammatical and behavioral categories requires a "semantic network" which analyzes sentences in terms of semantic options, or "meaning potential."
Halliday's functional, discourse-based account of language, not only distinguished him from Chomsky, who viewed language as knowledge, it complemented both Hymes's view of communicative competence, and, as we shall see, Speech Act Theory (Howatt, 1984:276; Richards & Rodgers, 1986:70). Furthermore, in language teaching, the centrality of meaning in Halliday's model became instrumental in providing a theoretical foundation for the meaningful, contextualized, and discourse-based syllabuses that were to become CLT's calling card.
If, as we saw above, language is communication, and language learning is acquiring the means to perform certain linguistic functions, what are these functions? For CLT, part of the answer to this question was found in Speech Act Theory and discourse analysis (English Language Institute, 1995).
2.1.1.2. Speech Act Theory
According to Speech Act Theory, a speech act is the basic unit of spoken communication, and has three aspects: the actual sounds produced in forming words (locutionary act), the literal meaning of the words (illocutionary act), and the intended effect of the words (perlocutionary act). There were initially five classes of speech acts: directives (e.g., commanding, begging, advising), assertives (e.g., asserting, reporting), commissives (e.g., promising, committing), declarations (e.g., appointing, nominating) and expressives (e.g., expressing emotion, thanking) (Searle, 1979: 12~20). To these Searle (1979) added indirect speech acts such as requests and refusals which were felt to be more polite ways of performing certain kinds of speech acts. The form that these speech acts take is influenced in no small measure by the social position of the interactants in a given speech event (See: §2.2.3 below).
Speech Act Theory had (and still has) enormous appeal as a classification system for utterances, due to its limited, but seemingly universal application. It is universal in the sense that all languages may share speech acts; i.e., in every language there is some way to invite, promise, command, etc.; it is limited in that all languages do not share in common the manner in which those speech acts are expressed or responded to (Bialystock & Hakuta, 1994: 171). For instance, according to Brown & Levinson (1987:244), in Japan requests are more intimately bound up with the "threats to face," and treated far more seriously than in the United States (See: §2.2.4 below)
2.1.1.3. Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is a field in transition, interpreted differently by different disciplines. In psycholinguistics, it is concerned with the nature of comprehending the written word. In artificial intelligence (AI), it is concerned with creating operational models to enable computers to understand text and words within certain fixed parameters. In sociolinguistics, it is mainly concerned with the structure of social interaction as manifested in the written and spoken word. In other words, discourse analysis refers to "the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring connected spoken or written discourse." (Stubbs, 1983:1)
The initial influence of discourse analysis on the early history of CLT was to elevate the discussion in linguistics from the level of the sentence to the level of interpersonal communication. According to discourse analysis language was not composed of random words and phrases, but consisted of sentences combined in connected discourse. Unlike the grammatical approach, which focused on individual sentences, discourse analysis concerned itself with the way sentences were used and combined over stretches of connected utterances. It was this view that Stern (1992:161) had in mind when he defined discourse analysis as the study of "how a speaker or writer with certain purposes in mind proceeds to express his meaning and what the listener or reader does to interpret this meaning."
As it developed further, discourse analysis sought to combine Hymes's concepts with Speech Act Theory, based on the assumption that "all utterances not only serve to express propositions, but also perform actions" (Levinson, 1983:243). This dual nature was expressed by Widdowson (1990:100) as follows:
Every linguistic expression contains the potential for a multiplicity of meanings and which one is realized on a particular occasion is determined by nonlinguistic factors of context.
The influence of discourse analysis on CLT is difficult to measure as both fields have expanded in tandem; however, its chief influence was, and continues to be, the support it gives to the view that language is communication.
2.1.1.4. An Expanded View of Communicative Competence
Canale and Swain (1988) were able to bring many loose ends together in their expanded definition of communicative competence. According to Richards & Rodgers (1986:71), Canale and Swain's definition of communicative competence consisted of four interdependent aspects:
1. Sociolinguistic competence: an understanding of the social context in which communication takes place.
2. Discourse competence: the interpretation of the links among individual message elements, and how meaning is represented in discourse and texts.
3. Strategic competence: the strategies speakers use to stop, start, maintain, repair, and orchestrate communication.
4. Grammatical competence: encompassing Chomsky's linguistic competence and Hymes's "formally possible."
As shall be demonstrated below, the syllabus developed in this dissertation will address all four aspects of communicative competence, but the importance of each shall be in the above noted descending order.
2.1.1.5. Summary
Chomsky saw competence and performance as indications that the human brain came ready for language (Crystal, 1987:234). Like Meno, in Plato's dialogue of the same name (Day, 1994:35~72) in whose mind all the theorems of geometry were waiting to be actualized, the human brain contained all the prerequisites for language in its design.
Powerful though this conception was, Dell Hymes made the critical shift away from Chomsky's mentalist structures to the social and cultural aspects of language.
However, the functional linguists found that, in addition to knowing whether and to what extent something was "formally possible," learning a second language involved acquiring the means to perform different linguistic functions. Speech Act Theory was useful for categorizing these linguistic functions, notwithstanding it did not reveal how utterances were organized in discourse.
Discourse analysis formalized the investigation initiated by Speech Act Theory into how utterances were organized in discourse by presenting an account of the relationship between linguistic systems and their communicative force in text and discourse.
Based on the foregoing, CLT language theory came to be seen as consisting of the following characteristics:
1. Language is a system for the expression of meaning.
2. The primary function of language is for interaction and communication.
3. The structure of language reflects its functional and communicative uses.
4. The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and structural features, but categories of functional and communicative meaning exemplified in discourse. (Richards & Rodgers, 1986:71)
2.1.2. CLT Language Learning Theory
Savignon summed up the view on language learning theory held by many associated with CLT (See also: Celce-Murcia, 1991; Halliday, 1994; Little, 1994:104; Tomlin, 1995:142; Morley, 1995):
Communication cannot take place in the absence of structure, or grammar, a set of shared assumptions about how language works, along with a willingness of the participants to cooperate in the negotiation of meaning [Regarding] the development of communicative ability, research findings overwhelmingly support the integration of form-focused exercises and meaning-focused experience. (1991:268~269).
Unlike audiolingualism and other approaches (See: §2.3 below) CLT is not associated with any single language learning theory. Accordingly, Richards & Rodgers (1986:72) claimed that "elements of an underlying [language learning] theory can be discerned from CLT practices."
Howatt (1984) makes a twofold distinction in CLT's approach to language learning theory: the "weak version," and the "strong version" of the communicative approach.
According to the weak ("learning to use English") version, there is sense in which learners already "know" English, but in order to learn to "use" English, learners need to be provided with conditions that "promote (competent) communicative performance" (Howatt, 1984:287). In practical terms this means the use of simulations of spoken language such as role plays, games, pair practice, information gap, etc. (Rost, 1990:29).
The strong ("using English to learn it") version, on the other hand, claimed that language is acquired as a result of the activity of communication itself, rather than being a precondition for it.
Learners must use their communicative capacities in order to learn the new language they must develop communicative competence. (Howatt, 1984:287)
In any case CLT language learning theory emphasized activities that " engage the learner in meaningful and authentic language use (rather than merely mechanical practice of language patterns)." (Richards & Rodgers, 1986:72).
As Widdowson stated:
Language users cannot spin meanings out of nothing any more than they can achieve communicative purposes simply by reciting sentences. (1990:123)
2.1.3. Learner-centered Teaching
The above language and language learning theories are evidenced in "Learner-centered teaching" and "task-based learning," both of which have influenced CLT syllabus design, and most closely coincide with the principles that guide the creation of the materials for this syllabus. (See: Stern, 1992; Savignon, 1991; Nunan, 1991).
By definition CLT puts the focus on the learner. Learner communicative needs provide a framework for elaborating program goals in terms of functional competence. This implies global, qualitative assessment of learner achievement as opposed to quantitative assessment of discrete linguistic features. (Savignon, 1991:266)
The justification for this focus on the learner in CLT was derived from the view that: i) the learner is an active participant in the learning process, not a passive recipient (Candlin, 1987; Morley, 1995:17), and ii) the learner's individual needs must be addressed whenever feasible (Wilkins, 1976:19). As Widdowson (1990:121) concluded, learning should not be seen as a process of " conformity to the conditions of the transmission controlled by the teacher, but as a self generating process by the learners themselves."
Thus, Learner-centered teaching stressed the following initiatives (See: Nunan, 1995a):
1. Learners should be involved in actively communicating with each other and with the teacher;
2. In addition to language, learners should be taught learning strategies that will help them throughout their lives;
3. Learners should be involved in making choices about the content and the direction of their study;
4. Learners should be encouraged to explore other avenues of learning that would be effective for them.
2.1.4. Task-based Learning
A task is any activity that is carried out as the result of processing or comprehending language; for example, following oral or written instructions, or responding to a command or request. (Richards, Platt & Weber, 1985:289)
Tasks are viewed as a critical part of CLT because:
fluency in [the] communication process can only develop within a "task-oriented teaching" one which provides "actual meaning" by focusing on tasks to be mediated through language (Johnson, 1979:200)
Using tasks as the basis for a syllabus has been justified by Candlin (1987) on pedagogical grounds (See: §2.3.3 below), and by Fotos & Ellis (1991:610) on empirical grounds, who claimed the task-based approach to language pedagogy provides opportunities for "the kinds of interaction which have been suggested to promote acquisition." A task-based syllabus, as will be discussed below, proceeds from a typology of tasks and texts rather than an inventory of linguistic items such as grammar, vocabulary, functions or notions.
In practical terms this means the use of "learner-directed projects involving the interactive use of language" (Rost, 1990:29), and "interactive tasks and collaborative learning modes of communicative class instruction" (Morley, 1995:17).
2.2. Interactional Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistic perspectives have been important in understanding the implications of norm, appropriacy and variability for CLT use of authentic language data has underscored the importance of context-setting, roles, genre, etc. in interpreting the meaning of a text. (Savignon, 1991:270)
Interactional sociolinguistics is a functional approach to discourse that focuses on how language is used. It is concerned with the way people use language to serve referential meanings, and how contexts determine the social, cultural and expressive meaning of utterances (Schiffrin, 1994:351). Analysis based on this approach often reveals that a single exchange is subject to multiple interpretations, and that these interpretations are often linked to different social identities and schema; i.e., information that is needed for the listener to understand new information (Gumperz, 1982a). For these reasons interactional sociolinguistics has adopted an interactional model of communication, which assumes that social behavior, intentional or unintentional, underlies communication (Schiffrin, 1994:397).
Interactional sociolinguistics traces its origins primarily to the theories of anthropologist John Gumperz and sociologist Ervin Goffman (Schiffrin, 1994). The works of both of these scholars were applied extensively within linguistics by Brown and Levinson (1987), Schiffrin (1987; 1994) and Tannen (1984; 1986; 1990; 1993a; 1994), among others.
Within the purview of interactional sociolinguistics, although not exclusively so, are several concepts that bear directly on the syllabus design proposed in this dissertation: schema, framing, power and solidarity and face.
2.2.1. Schema
Bartlett (1932; 1958) is generally credited with first proposing the concept of schema, which he based on his studies of memory. Bartlett found that when subjects retold stories that they had been told, they often recalled details that had not actually been in the original stories.
In Bartlett's experiments, people were told an American Indian story and asked to repeat it. The story intentionally included beliefs and narrative conventions that were unfamiliar to the British experimental subjects. When the subjects retold the story, they adjusted the original content to correspond more closely to their own world view. In other words, they altered the content to fit their own frames of reference and schemata.
Considering this, Bartlett concluded that memory had a structure, which he called "schema" (plural: schemata), that provided a mental framework for understanding and remembering information.
Schemata have received significant empirical support from cognitive psychology experiments such as those conducted by Bransford & Franks (1971) in which people were shown pictures and asked questions about the story they depicted. Bransford & Franks found that people would remember different details depending upon the nature of the picture. Gumperz (1982a), as explained below, incorporated schemata into his view of frames. More recently, Mandler (1984) and Rumelhart (1980) have further developed the schema concept.
Research on novice versus expert performance (Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988) indicated that the nature of expertise is for the most part due to the possession of schemata that guide perception and problem-solving. Schemata are also considered to be important components of cultural differences in cognition (Quinn & Holland, 1987).
The term was used by Bartlett in the field of psychology as part of his study of memory, but has been picked up by a number of fields. In the field of artificial intelligence (AI), for instance, Bobrow and Norman (1975:148) "propose that memory structures [in a computer] are comprised of a set of active schemata, each capable of evaluating information passed to it and capable of passing information and requests to other schemata." However in AI, although the sense of background information that is stored in memory is preserved, schemata are a part of routine or automatic processing, and have a fixed rather than dynamic nature.
In linguistics, schema is generally used to refer to prior experiences and knowledge, often of routine speech events, utilized to inform the present situation. Schema is defined by Anderson and Lynch (1988:14) as " a mental structure, consisting of relevant individual knowledge, memory, and experience, which allows us to incorporate what we learn into what we know." Along similar lines, Widdowson (1983:27) defined schema as "a stereotypic pattern derived from instances of past experience which organizes language in preparation for use." However, Widdowson conflates the notions of schema and frame, making a distinction between "frames of reference," which are schemata related to the propositional content of discourse, and what he calls "rhetorical routines," which are schemata related to the illocutionary intent of discourse.
In this dissertation schema shall also refer to prior experiences and knowledge which the speaker brings to an interaction or event, but, after Tannen (1993), as dynamically linked to frames (See: §2.2.2 below).
2.2.2. Framing
Just as was the case with schemata, the term frame is used in other fields. Gumperz (1982a) in anthropology and Goffman (1974; 1981) in sociology will be discussed at length below. In artificial intelligence, frame is used to represent knowledge in computational terms and is often used interchangeably with schemata.
Minsky (1975:212) defines frame as "a data structure for representing a stereotyped situation." This would include event sequences such as birthday parties or eating in a restaurant, and ordered expectations with respect to objects and settings, such as a bedroom or baseball stadium.
The chief difference between its use in AI and the anthropological/sociological use of the term, is that frames are a static concept in the former, but dynamic and interactive in the latter.
In linguistics, Widdowson's (1983) use was mentioned above. In discourse analysis, the term frame is used to describe the structuring of discourse, i.e., the various steps followed to build discourse. For example, Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), in their study of classroom interactions, used frame to demarcate the boundaries between transactions; i.e., chunks of discourse involving exchanges of the "Initiation-Response-Follow-up" type. In this context there are, for the most part, five such framing words: "OK," "well," "right, "now," and "good." Teachers in Sinclair and Coulthard's study generally used framing words to indicate the beginning or end of a transaction; for example: "Well, today I thought we would do three quizzes" (Coulthard, 1985:123). In other words, frames are meta-discoursal statements.
Framing, as used in this dissertation, refers to a complex, interactive process in which certain cues, or meta-messages, about the speech event embedded in utterances are used by interactants to define and interpret their social alignment, among other things. This process is strongly influenced by the interactants' expectations, prior experiences (schemata) and the culture in which the speech event occurs. This definition of framing derives from the use of the term as found in the writings of Gumperz, Goffman and Tannen and others.
Gumperz (1982a) extended the assumptions basic to anthropology to linguistics by asserting that the meaning, use and structure of language are culturally and socially relative.
Any utterance can be understood in numerous ways, people make decisions about how to interpret a given utterance based on their definition of what is happening at the time [and] define the interaction in terms of a frame or schema which is identifiable and familiar. (Gumperz, 1982a:130)
By careful examination of the signaling mechanisms that conversationalists react to, one can isolate cues and symbolic conventions through which distance is maintained or frames of interpretation are created. (Gumperz, 1982a:7)
In other words, what we think and say is subject to external influences; furthermore, language provides us with signals about who we are and what we want to communicate. These signals, or "contextualization cues" as Gumperz called them, provide participants with information that allows them to interpret an interaction in terms of a context, or "frame."
Whereas Gumperz focused on situated inference, Ervin Goffman extended and complemented the work of Gumperz by providing a framework for describing and understanding the form and meaning of social and interpersonal contexts. (See: Goffman, 1974; 1981). To this end, Goffman (1974) developed the notion of frame in two significant ways.
First, Goffman demonstrated that no verbal or nonverbal communication move could be understood without reference to a "meta-message" about how to interpret that move. According to Goffman, in order for participants to interpret utterances in the way they were intended, they needed to know what frame they were operating in; i.e., whether the activity in which they were engaged was joking, arguing, lamenting or some other of the innumerable activities in which people participate. In this way, from an anthropological perspective Gumperz, and from a sociological perspective Goffman, both came to view the frame as "an interactional unit with social meaning" (Tannen, 1993b:19).
Second, Goffman (1974) observed that along with framing an event, meta-messages also inform participants of their social "alignment." He coined the term "footing" to describe this aspect of frames.
" [Footing is] the alignment we take up to ourselves and the others present as expressed in the way we manage the production or reception of an utterance. A change in our footing is another way of talking about a change in our frame for events." (Goffman, 1981:128)
After Gumperz and Goffman, Tannen (1984; 1986; 1990; 1993a; 1994) maintained that frames were "superordinate message[s] about how communication is intended" (Tannen, 1984:23), but emphasized their dynamic nature:
Communication is a continuous stream in which everything is simultaneously a reaction and an instigation, an instigation and a reaction. We keep moving in a complex dance that is always different but made up of familiar steps. The constantly shifting rhythm and sequence is adjusted by subtle meta-messages that frame what's going on from minute to minute. (Tannen, 1986:91~92)
Thus, utterances are not only framed by social interaction, utterances may themselves convey meta-messages about the initiation, continuation, alteration or closing of a frame (Tannen, 1984).
Tannen (1993b) has also noted that frames and schemata are dynamically linked, and that a mismatch of schemata can trigger a shift in frames. In this regard, Tannen (Tannen & Wallet, 1993:16) related an episode in which she was talking to a friend on the telephone, when he suddenly yelled, "You stop that!" How was Tannen able to realize that this command was addressed to a dog and not her? First of all, Tannen drew on her familiarity with frames to identify her friend's interjection with the frame of "talking to a pet" rather than "chatting with a friend." However, she also drew on the knowledge that her friend had a dog. In this way her schemata about her friend influenced her interpretation of the frame.
Sometimes the situation defines the interaction in terms of what and how we speak. In this case, our reactions to what others say or do are instigated by how we feel we are being framed. Alternatively, what we say and how we say it can define the interaction itself. In the latter case, what we say and do instigates how others feel they are being framed. In the following two sections, I shall examine two conceptual approaches to viewing the ebb and flow of frames: power and solidarity and face.
To summarize, alignment refers to positions we take up with respect to our social and personal relationship with others. Alignment is one aspect of framing, i.e., our sense of what activity we are engaged in and how we mean what we say. Framing is furthermore dynamically linked to our expectations about people, objects, events, settings and ways to interact. These expectations, without which we would be unable to interpret any activity, utterance or move, are in turn a function of schemata, i.e., our prior knowledge and experience.
2.2.3. Power and Solidarity
Brown and Gilman (1960) are credited with the establishment within sociolinguistics of the study of address forms, i.e., how social distance and rank determine the way we address one another within the bounds of the social norms of discourse.
Brown and Gilman (1960) posited two basic choices open to participants in assessing social roles and positions: power or solidarity. In roles characterized by differences in power, participants adopt conversation strategies marked by either dominance or dependency. Such relationships are referred to as "nonreciprocal," because one person has power over another's behavior, and two people cannot simultaneously have power over each other. At the other extreme, in roles characterized by solidarity, participants adopt conversational strategies that mark affiliation and closeness. These relationships are "reciprocal," in that closeness is generally a shared behavior.
Citing pronoun use by speakers of French, German and Italian, Brown and Gilman (1960) demonstrated the semantic repercussions of power and solidarity. In all these languages, the less powerful person uses formal address forms (Brown and Gilman use the term "V" from the Latin vos ("you")) when speaking to the more powerful person. The more powerful person responds using a familiar address form (Brown and Gilman use the term "T" from the Latin tu ("you")).
In the same vein, Martin (1988:1079) observed that "references to the second and third person in Japanese are inevitably bound up with concepts of social status." Unlike English, which no longer has pronoun distinctions (Yule, 1985:193~194), in Japanese you can go from addressing a pauper to a prince using words that would all be translated as "you" in English: kissama, omae, omaera, kimi, anta, anata, anatatachi, temei, temai, onushi, sochira, sochirasama, and otaku to mention a few of the choices available to Japanese speakers. You could climb the same social ladder in English of course, but not with pronouns alone.
As a further indication of the importance of social status in the Japanese language, Watanabe observes:
The choice of language is strictly determined by the hierarchical social order In sum (1) nonreciprocal language use and (2) non-confrontational communication are characteristics of Japanese communication. These two characteristics, along with the social motivations underlying them, are important to relating the communicative behavior of Japanese to their expectations about interactions. (1993:180)
Thus, address forms in Japanese are part of the means by which participants communicate whether a relationship is based upon solidarity or power.
2.2.4. Face
After Goffman (1967), Brown and Levinson (1978:61) defined face as " something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction." Whenever two people meet, there are two aspects to the face-preserving negotiations toward which conversation is directed.
The person will have two points of view: a defensive orientation towards saving his own face, and a protective orientation towards saving the other's face. (Goffman, 1974:325)
Along similar lines, Brown and Levinson (1987) argued that in many speech transactions, a threat to face is involved in some way for either speaker or listener. Speakers must estimate the "cost" of a particular speech act, in terms of its relative threat to speaker, listener, or both. To do this, speakers make use of their perception of the degree of power or solidarity that exists between speaker and listener. There are two face-preserving strategies which Brown and Levinson (1987) refer to as "positive politeness" and "negative politeness."
Positive politeness strategies indicate rapport between speaker and listener, and mark solidarity, assuring the listener that her/his face is valued by the speaker, and that they share similar wants, needs, etc., or are members of the same group.
Negative politeness strategies, on the other hand, maximize social distance, and are marked by respectful behavior, addressing the listener's desire " to have his freedom of action unhindered and his attention unhindered" (Brown & Levinson, 1987:129~130).
As shown above, language strategies which take account of the social alignment between speaker and listener are crucial to the successful management of social interaction through language. In functional terms, this means strategies for what is communicated as politeness. Thus for the sociolinguist, politeness is the study of the strategies we employ to adjust what we say to take into account the effect our words have on others (Tannen, 1986:21). Brown and Levinson (1987) claimed that the successful use of these strategies creates an atmosphere of politeness that enables social transactions to proceed without threat to the face of speaker or listener.
Although the same politeness strategies are employed everywhere, every culture defines the parameters of interaction differently. In cultures favoring positive politeness, such as the United States (Brown & Levinson, 1987:244) requests are "no big thing," and social distance, no insurmountable hurdle. In contrast, in cultures favoring negative politeness, such as Japan (Richards, 1981:23), requests are a serious matter, and social distance is a significant obstacle (Brown & Levinson, 1987:244). For instance, prominent among politeness strategies in the Japanese language is the use of in-group identity markers. Vocatives, nominal avoidance, use of titles, ellipsis, etc. serve this function in many situations, as do such circumlocutions as "Big Brother" (Oniisan), "Big Sister" (Oneesan), "Superior" (Senpai) and "Subordinate" (Kouhai) (Martin, 1988:963~966).
Seeking agreement and avoiding disagreement are regarded as the pillars of Japanese society (Reischauer, 1977:123~225). As Reischauer (1977:146) observed, " the stronger demands in Japan for conformity make the social patterns weigh all the more heavily." In Japanese, it is more polite, and the general rule, to frame interrogative requests so that they can be answered affirmatively (Martin, 1988:368). The listener will often go to considerable lengths to avoid saying "No." When it is unavoidable, the listener will often hedge with a word such as muzukashii ("[That's] difficult") as a euphemism for "No."
2.2.5. The Culture-Specific Nature of Frames
Gumperz (1982a) observed that when participants understand and react to relevant cues in a conversation, the interpretive process is taken for granted. Only when a participant fails to react to a cue, or is unaware of its function, does a misunderstanding ensue.
It is important to note that when this happens and when a difference in interpretation is brought to a participant's attention, it tends to be seen in attitudinal terms. A speaker is said to be unfriendly, impertinent, rude, uncooperative, or to fail to understand Miscommunication of this type, in other words, is regarded as a social faux pas and leads to misjudgments of the speaker's intent; it is not likely to be identified as a mere linguistic error. (Gumperz, 1982a:132; italics added)
If this is the case among native speakers, who more than likely share a common culture and conventionalized expectations about interactions, it is far more likely to occur when participants are from different cultures, and do not share the same experiences and expectations about people, objects, events, settings, interactions, and so on.
In this regard, Tannen (1993b) showed the difference between Americans and Greeks with respect to expectations about observed events. Tannen asked subjects to watch a film that had included sound but no dialogue, and then relate the story of the film to someone. It was found that the American subjects were far more conscious of their roles as "subjects of an experiment" than their Greek counterparts. This was evidenced in the fact that the Americans' narratives were longer and more detailed than the Greeks', and contained more evidence of expectations about "films as films" and the role of the "film viewer" than the Greek narratives. Although the film was the same, interpretations of it by the American and the Greek subjects were different.
If two people from different cultures do not share the same expectations about how to interact, that is, perceive differently the unmarked or marked linguistic features that signal a superordinate definition of what is being done by the talk, it is possible that differing interpretations of the situated meaning of what is said are processed by the interactants. (Watanabe, 1993:179)
Edward Anthony (1996) recently compared a person's native culture to the default settings of a computer that remain in effect unless they are somehow modified or overwritten.
Such settings provide a kind of rhetoric of cultural behavior that enable us to communicate effectively with those who share similar default values. But when we come in contact with people whose cultural default settings do not parallel ours, we can expect static to interfere with effective communication. (1996:1)
It is the position of this study that by closely examining speech events from the perspective of the theories of frames, linguistic cues, or "meta-messages," signaling frames in one culture can be identified and then compared with those found in another, and that an understanding of these differences will assist the learner. This notion is reflected in the organization of the syllabus which is discussed in the following section.
2.3. Syllabus Design
The syllabus is the distillation of the myriad influences of language and language learning theories. The specification of its content, or lack thereof, reflects the philosophy of the designer, the educational institution, the society and the culture surrounding the learning experience.
In the preceding sections the two major theoretical influences on the syllabus developed in this study were discussed: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and the notion of framing from interactional sociolinguistics. The following section will present an overview of syllabus design, examining general principles, types and the evolution of perspectives on syllabus design in this century.
2.3.1. General Principles of Syllabus Design
Widdowson (1987:65) defined syllabus as:
[the] specification of a teaching programme or pedagogic agenda which defines a particular subject for a particular group of learners. Such a specification provides not only a characterization of content, the formalization in pedagogic terms of an area of knowledge or behaviour, but also arranges this content as a succession of interim objectives.
Nunan (1988:48~49), following a further distinction made by Widdowson (1990:131) and Stern (1992:178), differentiated between "product-oriented" and "process-oriented" syllabuses, defining process as "a series of actions directed toward some end," and product as "the end itself" (Nunan, 1988:12).
Product-oriented syllabuses focus "on the knowledge and skills which learners gain as a result of instruction" (Nunan, 1988:27). This term is most often used to refer to structural/grammatical and notional-functional syllabuses.
A process-oriented syllabus consists of a specification of tasks and activities through which learners gain knowledge and skills (Nunan, 1988:40~42). Examples of process-oriented syllabuses would include, among others: task-based and content-based syllabuses, as well as those based on second language acquisition (SLA). The latter has not been considered in this study because, with the possible exception of Krashen (See: § 2.3.4 below), the effect of SLA on Communicative Language Teaching has been marginal. SLA research, which studies the order and processes by which structural features of a second language are mastered, has had some influence on syllabus design (See: §2.3.3 below); however, this influence has been mitigated by the practical difficulty in applying research results (Nunan, 1995b:267). From a communicative point of view:
there is very little that one can do in the classroom, particularly at the lower levels of proficiency, without the introduction of relatively late-acquired structures, such as question forms. (Nunan, 1995b:267)
As far as syllabus design is concerned, SLA research finds " the route, if not the rate, of language acquisition to be largely unaffected by classroom instruction" (Savignon, 1991:267).
2.3.2. Product-oriented Syllabuses
As mentioned above (§2.1.1.1) language teaching was dominated until the 1970s by behaviorism-based audiolingualism (AL).
In AL terms, learning a language meant mastering the fundamentals of language and the rules for their combination, by moving up the "pyramid" from phoneme to morpheme to word to phrase to sentence (Richards and Rogers, 1986:49).
Syllabus design was based largely on contrastive analysis (CA) on the one hand, and notions of linguistic complexity on the other. In his 1957 classic, Linguistics Across Cultures, Lado (1957:9~50) went step-by-step from simple to more and more complex structures through a contrastive analysis of English and other languages. Lado takes the reader around the world and up the ladder from phoneme Æ phoneme sequence Æ words Æ stress and rhythm Æ intonation and pitch, stopping in every port that offers a contrastive example.
"Structural" or "grammatical," as these syllabuses came to be called, consisted of sequenced grammatical structures. It was the task of the learners to imitate sequenced grammatical structures presented to them by their teachers, and practice "sentence pattern grammar" drills (Crystal, 1987:374). The intent of these syllabuses was clear: "Don't ask questions; just repeat after me." (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1983:2)
Starting in the 1970s, audiolingual-based drills and exercises came to be seen by many applied linguists as a meaningless, non-communicative process, and its product as long on effort and short on results (Morley, 1991:485). Larsen-Freeman (1991:319) further pointed out that, contrary to the hypothesis of CA, research had revealed that it was the similarities, not the differences, between the learner's first language (L1) and second language (L2) that caused learners the most confusion.
Grammar also came to be seen in a new light, increasingly viewed as only one component of communication (Canale & Swain, 1988; Hymes, 1979; Nunan, 1995b), and not as an autonomous system. Grammar, it now seemed, might best be taught and learned in the contexts of meaning, social function, and discourse (Celce-Murcia, 1991; Halliday, 1994; Little, 1994:104; Savignon, 1991:268; Tomlin, 1995:142).
As discussed at length above, both the communicative approach (Hymes, 1979) and functional linguists (Halliday, 1979, 1994), linked meaning to "extralinguistic phenomena" (Brumfit & Johnson, 1979:44), and viewed language as an instrument of communication. Accordingly, the teacher's primary function became communication facilitator (Celce-Murcia, 1991:462).
Wilkins (1976), Van Ek (1976), Munby (1978), and Van Ek and Alexander (1980), among others followed these theoretical breakthroughs with pedagogical applications. Prominent among them was the notional-functional syllabus.
In the notional-functional syllabus, language content was arranged in terms of the "notions" and "functions" required to engage in an interaction. Language content was presented in conjunction with the requisite language items.
In general, functions may be described as the communicative purposes for which we use language, while notions are the conceptual meanings (objects, entities, states of affairs, logical relationships, and so on) expressed through language. (Nunan, 1988:35)
Functions would include apologizing, identifying, describing, inviting, retelling, etc., in different types of discourse. The successful completion of these functions would entail the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing (Richards, Platt & Platt, 1992:150). On the other hand, notions referred to the socio-cultural and expressive meanings of utterances.
Unlike the structural/grammatical syllabus, in syllabuses based on notional-functional criteria, the primary units of language were not merely its features, but functional and communicative items which the syllabus designer believed would assist learners in successfully accomplishing communicative aims. In order to determine these aims, it was necessary according to Wilkins (1976) to institute some form of learner needs analysis (NA) in order to make " a deliberate choice of language content to meet certain ends" (Stern, 1983:502).
2.3.3. Process-oriented Syllabuses
As shown earlier, a structural/grammatical syllabus consisted of a sequence of graded language items, whereas in a notional-functional syllabus, language content was arranged according to the meanings a learner needed to express and the functions for which he/she would use language (Wilkins, 1976; Richards, Platt & Platt, 1992:250).
Although greeted enthusiastically at first, the notional-functional syllabus was eventually criticized for replacing one list for another. According to Widdowson (1979), a list of linguistic notions and functions did not reflect how language was learned any more than did a list of grammatical structures. Furthermore, the notional-functional syllabus lacked criteria for selecting and ordering language content, which, at the very least, the structural/grammatical approach had possessed.
Thus the first foray by syllabus designers into the application of the newly emerging communicative view of language met with less than satisfactory results. Breaking the bonds that tethered them to teaching methods based on a structural description of language that stretched back in this century to Bloomfield (1933), applied linguists began to focus on the actual communicative activities in which participants engaged. Prominent among the syllabus designs to emerge from this view were the task-based syllabus and the content-based syllabus.
The task-based syllabus has already been discussed in §2.1.4 above in terms of the language learning theories associated with it. In practical terms the task-based syllabus differs from product-oriented syllabuses in that the design proceeds from a typology of tasks and texts rather than an inventory of linguistic items such as grammar, vocabulary, functions and notions. In such a syllabus:
Decisions about which of these linguistic features should be taught, and how they can be integrated into programs that are basically focused on the communication of meaning, are made with reference to predetermined target and pedagogical tasks. (Nunan, 1994:9)
Candlin (1987) provided a pedagogic rationale, as well as suggesting criteria for judging the worth of tasks. Of particular relevance to the syllabus developed in this study, good tasks should:
A distinction should be drawn between "realworld" tasks (tasks that people perform in real life) and "pedagogic" tasks (tasks that learners perform in class). To this end, Long (1985:89) defined a "realworld" task as:
a piece of work undertaken for oneself or for others, freely or for some reward. Thus, examples of tasks include painting a fence, dressing a child, filling out a form, buying a pair of shoes, making an airline reservation In other words, by "task" is meant the hundred and one things people do in everyday life.
Turning now to the content-based syllabus, the guiding principle behind this approach was perhaps summed up best by Celce-Murcia:
language instruction should be content-based, meaningful, contextualized, and discourse-based (rather than sentence-based). The teacher's role is primarily to facilitate language use and communication. (1991:462)
In a content-based syllabus, content is defined in terms of situations, topics, themes or academic subjects (Widdowson, 1979).
The language and content focused on are drawn from the input, and are selected primarily according to what the learner will need in order to do the task. In other words, in the task the linguistic knowledge and topic knowledge that are built up through the unit are applied to the solving of a communication problem. (Hutchinson and Waters, 1983:101)
The source of content explored in the syllabus developed in this study is video materials, such as television dramas, comedies and news programs. These materials provide learners with an opportunity to hear and see authentic language in realistic contexts, and engage in "real life" tasks which involve exchanging information and opinions.
A syllabus that seeks to highlight the sociolinguistic elements in language, as does the one considered in this study, would find the structural/grammatical and notional-functional syllabuses either incomplete or not specific enough in terms of dealing with or presenting sociolinguistic concepts such as politeness strategies, notions of framing, face, alignment, etc.(See: §2.2 above). In this respect a task-oriented content-based syllabus would be far more amenable to inculcating an appreciation and understanding of the impact of sociolinguistic concepts on learning. The justification for this approach derives from the view that learning is stimulated by classroom tasks that replicate the sorts of activities that learners engage in in the real world, and that such tasks stimulate internal learning processes (Nunan, 1988:41; Widdowson, 1990).
2.3.4. The Evolution of Perspectives on Syllabus Design
As we have seen in the succession of syllabus designs elaborated above, for most of its history, the syllabus has very much been the stepchild of language theory and language learning theory, merely evolving along with them.
It was the assumption of the structural/grammatical syllabus that how a language was described was related to how it was processed by language learners. In line with this thinking, two approaches to structural/grammatical syllabus design evolved. In one approach, CA, it was assumed that the L2 structures which differed most from the same structures in the learner's L1 would be the most difficult to learn and should therefore be given greatest emphasis in the syllabus. (See: Fries, 1945) In the second approach, it was assumed that linguistic complexity and learning difficulty were closely related, and that a syllabus should therefore present the learner with target structures in order of increasing linguistic complexity (Lado, 1964). It was claimed that language could be described in terms of unit, structure, class, and system: "With these four basic categories it is possible to describe the grammar of all languages." (Halliday, McIntosh, and Strevens, 1964:31).
As the field of applied linguistics evolved from the study of the structure of language, to the role language played in the conveyance of meaning (Halliday, 1978) and as the medium for social interaction (Hymes, 1974; 1979), syllabus designers became disenchanted with the reductionist structural/grammatical syllabus and its view of language. Instead they began to view second language learning in terms of the expression and understanding of linguistic "notions and functions" needed for effectual communication (Wilkins, 1976; van Ek, 1976; van Ek and Alexander, 1980). The basis of the syllabus shifted from grammatical and linguistic categories to inventories of notions and functions (Wilkins, 1976). Grammatical forms were retained in the syllabus, but were presented in the service of notions and functions. Syllabus items were selected and ordered not on the basis of complexity or contrasts with the L1, but in terms of their usefulness to learners (Munby, 1978).
However it became apparent that syllabuses designed according to notions and functions not only did not illuminate the language learning process, but lacked the sequenced order of the structural/grammatical syllabus. This situation triggered renewed interest in linguistic structures, and the use of grammatical structures as the fundamental component in syllabus design had a brief renaissance (Rutherford & Sharwood Smith, 1988; Rutherford 1987, Brumfit & Johnson, 1979). Even so, a convincing new paradigm involving grammatical structures did not emerge.
In structural/grammatical and notional-functional syllabuses, form followed function. From this view, language had an underlying substratum, a set of rules and operations that underpinned language and to which all expressions could be reduced, or from which all could be extrapolated. However, Learner-centered teaching and the other approaches which came to be associated with CLT took positions radically opposed to this reductionist view. In many cases, CLT approaches did not rely on complex systems that underpinned language; rather, they relied upon something within the individual learner to drive the learning process forward. This impetus might be provided by a need to communicate in a particular field, or the social desire to communicate or seek meaning, but in any case, it was something that the learner was responsible for creating prior to, during, or as a result of the learning process.
This focus on process derived in part from the view that the learner's individual needs must be provided for whenever feasible (Wilkins, 1976:19). Needs Analysis (NA) and English for Special Purposes (ESP) sought to make " a deliberate choice of language content to meet certain ends and to reach a level of language skill in a certain time" (Stern, 1983:502).
As ELT became multidisciplinary, deriving insights and course corrections from other fields, such as sociolinguistics, sociology, psychology, philosophy and education, syllabuses that focused on the product or the result of the teaching process were seen as running contrary to the shift in focus in the field of applied linguistics from the product of instruction, to the process through which knowledge and language skills were gained.
Learner-centered teaching, as discussed earlier, also sought to address unique learner conditions, but broadened the perspective from specific learners as in NA, or a specific field as in ESP, to the learning process itself. In this case the learning process, not only a learner's individual needs, served as the foundation for syllabus design.
CLT came to international prominence thanks to the rapid acceptance of communicative principles, and the proliferation of teaching materials based upon them. However, the accompanying shift in emphasis from product to process made it difficult to maintain a distinction between syllabus design and method.
In books and papers on the subject, it is possible to distinguish a broad and a narrow approach to syllabus design. The narrow view [of syllabus design] draws a clear distinction between syllabus design and methodology. Syllabus design is seen as being concerned essentially with the selection and grading of content, while methodology is concerned with the selection of learning tasks and activities. Those who adopt a broader view question this strict separation, arguing that with the advent of communicative language teaching the distinction between content and tasks is difficult to sustain. (Nunan, 1988:5)
Communicative Language Teaching proved to be "a robust and challenging concept for teachers, researchers, and program developers alike" (Savignon, 1991:263). The fact that CLT language theory reflected a broad spectrum of Speech Act Theory, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and other disciplines, resulted in most syllabus designs relying on at least some aspect of this theory (Stern, 1992:13).
At the same time, CLT's broad base resulted in a proliferation of nonlinguistic theories about the process of language learning. For example, in Universal Grammar (UG), learning was thought to be a matter of setting parameters for a set of acquired language learning mechanisms, called the LAD, that allowed L1 children to create competence without conscious analysis (Chomsky, 1965; Sharwood Smith, 1994).
Along SLA lines, Krashen (1985) maintained that two independent knowledge systems underpinned L2 performance: "acquisition" and "learning." Acquisition was "a subconscious process identical in all important ways to the process children utilized in acquiring their first language" (Krashen, 1985:1); whereas learning was "a conscious process that results in 'knowing about' language" (Krashen, 1985:1). This process "monitored" the speaker's utterances initiated by the unconscious process of acquisition. Furthermore, successful acquisition was closely linked to learners' affective states and exposure to comprehensible L2 input. Along opposite lines, McLaughlin (1987) theorized that language learning was accomplished in the same way as other abilities, such as playing the piano, in which routines moved from "controlled processing" and short-term memory to "automatic processing" and long-term memory. Alternatively, Rutherford and Sharwood Smith observed a "crossover" or "interface" relationship between "learning" and "acquisition" accomplished through the "consciousness-raising" process (Sharwood Smith, 1988; Rutherford & Sharwood Smith, 1988; Rutherford, 1987; Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991). Rumelhart and McClelland's (1986) theory of "connectionism" viewed learning as establishing the strengths among connections in the vast "acquired" neural network. Language processing took place contemporaneously, not sequentially.
It is not the purpose of this study to evaluate these theories, but only to point out the wide range of potential starting points for CLT syllabus design. As Odlin (1995:316) observed, "utopian pedagogies are no more likely to succeed than have utopian political systems of this century." In this multidisciplinary atmosphere, a blending of perspectives is inevitable, the present dissertation being a case in point.
Chapter 3: Analysis
In this section, I shall: i) justify the selection of framing as a basis for syllabus design, and ii) outline the best approach to integrating and reflecting sociolinguistic insights in a course syllabus.
In the foregoing literature review, it was shown that CLT language theory defines the primary function of language as communication through interaction. Reflecting this, the primary units of language are not solely grammatical or structural features, but functional and communicative categories of meaning represented in discourse.
"Learner-centered teaching" and "task-based learning" were discussed as two related CLT language learning approaches that stress the active participation of learners in the learning process on the one hand, and learner-directed, interactive and communicative projects mediated through language on the other.
It was suggested that a task-oriented, content-based syllabus would be in line with these approaches in that it is based on a typology of tasks and texts rather than on an inventory of grammar, vocabulary, functions or other such linguistic items.
The significance of interactional sociolinguistics in general, and framing in particular, were also established. To summarize, framing is a complex, interactive process in which certain cues, or meta-messages, about the speech event embedded in utterances are used by interactants to define and interpret, among other things, their social alignment. This process was shown to be strongly influenced by the interactants' expectations, prior experiences and the culture in which the speech event occurred.
3.1. Sociolinguistics and CLT
One cannot help being struck by the complementary natures of sociolinguistics, which studies how people communicate, and CLT, which teaches people how to communicate. Three ways in which a CLT syllabus can benefit from sociolinguistics are immediately apparent.
First, as discussed above, Goffman (1974) demonstrated that participants needed to know what frame they were operating in to interpret utterances in the way they were intended. If this is the case for native speakers, can it be less significant for nonnative speakers? Obviously not. Just as grammar and lexicon are insufficient for native speakers of English to reliably interpret the intention of utterances, they are insufficient for learners of English as well. The recognition of frames is just as essential for learners if they are to develop appropriate expectations, understanding and responses. I emphasize the word recognition, because, although learners may benefit from learning about frames, they do not need to learn their meaning or significance. As Tannen pointed out:
people do not approach the world as naive, blank slate receptacles who take in stimuli as they exist in some independent and objective way, but rather as experienced and sophisticated veterans of perception who have stored their prior experiences as "an organized mass," and who see events and objects in the world in relation to each other and in relation to their prior experience. This prior experience or organized knowledge then takes the form of expectations about the world, and in the vast majority of cases, the world, being a systematic place, confirms these expectations, saving the individual the trouble of figuring things out anew all the time. (1993:20~21)
Second, in addition to the research supporting communicative approaches such as CLT, sociolinguistics adds a rich body of scientific evidence. Unlike audiolingual, structural/grammatical, notional-functional and other approaches, a sociolinguistic approach to syllabus design can, as has been done here, draw on a vast theoretical literature coupled with extensive research and field work.
Third, the Culture-Specific nature of frames has obvious and significant ramifications for the learner, by virtue of its influence on the learner's interpretation of a given interaction. Some cultures may share similar social alignments, and others may have diametrically opposed notions of interpersonal footing.
In the literature review, power and solidarity and face were discussed in light of the different emphasis American and Japanese culture place on these features. It was mentioned that Japanese society places inordinate significance (by American standards) on face. Japanese social relationships reflect a very intricate hierarchic power structure which dictates that certain politeness strategies be maintained and address forms adhered to.
In Japanese society, confrontation is to be avoided because it disrupts harmony within a group. Moreover it is considered almost prohibited when it is against the superior in the social hierarchy because it causes the superior's loss of face. (Watanabe, 1993:180)
Again, not only are learners capable of understanding frames employed by other cultures, but, according to Brown & Levinson (1987), in the case of politeness, there is every indication that cultures share universal strategies.
Frames are like the air we breathe something that are always there, never questioned, and rarely if ever intruding into consciousness. What learners need to appreciate is the shifting dynamics of frames with respect to a given culture.
The dynamics of conversation as a mechanism for personal interaction are influenced in subtle ways by the role attributed to talking in different cultures. The cross cultural study of conversational interaction helps explain how much talking people do; when, why and how they talk, as well as the topics they feel [are] appropriate in conversation. Often, conversational behaviour from nonnative speakers which seems irrational, puzzling, insensitive, or oversensitive merely reflects a difference in communicative style transferred from another language and culture. (Richards, 1981:25)
Given the Culture-Specific nature of frames, any syllabus that seeks to exploit this aspect of discourse must take into account: i) the need for a medium that makes frames explicit, and ii) the contrast between the culture of the learner and the target language. The English language syllabus for advanced Japanese learners presented below was created with these two factors in mind.
For the purposes of syllabus design, we shall define frame as: A dynamic set of expectations about social relations based on prior experience and background knowledge. Although this definition represents an oversimplification of the concepts discussed above in the literature review, I believe it is pedagogically necessary to simplify terminology for three reasons.
First, this definition separates the two aspects of frames essential for learners to properly interpret what they are viewing: social alignment and schemata. All people possess a vast storehouse of frames, the main difference in many cases being the weight given to each depending on cultural and individual variations. The same cannot be said for schemata. Learners can learn to "reframe" their frames, so to speak, but knowledge gaps must first be perceived as such, before they can be filled with the appropriate information. In other words, pedagogically, learners need to be able to differentiate between what they know and what they are capable of perceiving.
Second, although streamlined, the definition identifies a common thread running through the concepts of schema, power and solidarity, alignment, footing and face. How we address, converse and interact with our boss, friends, lover--whomever--will depend on our personal experiences and expectations, which, in turn, reflect the collective and conventionalized experiences and expectations of our culture. As in the computer analogy mentioned above, our culture provides us with default settings that remain in effect unless acted upon.
Third, although this definition ignores the many important shades of meaning among the terms mentioned above, this is, after all, an ESL ("English as a Second Language") syllabus, not a sociolinguistics course syllabus. In this ESL syllabus the concept of frames is utilized as a heuristic tool to aid learners in understanding and activating their vast potential storehouse of frames and background knowledge.
3.2. Sociolinguistics and Syllabus Design: How to Get Framing into the Picture
Teachers have long been aware of the importance of sociolinguistic factors in language learning; however, the standard approach to teaching these elements has been primarily deductive in nature through grammatical or notional-functional approaches. Learners are often presented with a list of linguistic forms that typify "formal" or "informal" use ("Give me the book," "Please give me the book," "Would you mind giving me the book," etc.), and then often listen to and practice sample dialogues. In other words, learners are taught how something is done, for example, how to apologize or speak informally, etc., and then they listen to and practice sample conversations. (See: §6.2 for an example from Leo Jones' Functions of English.)
Structural/grammatical and notional-functional approaches are indicative of how the teaching of sociolinguistic aspects of language has lagged behind the trend in language teaching to adopt more communicative, meaningful and discourse-based approaches.
The syllabus presented in this dissertation reflects an inductive approach to sociolinguistic concepts. Learners are shown how the interplay of meaning and social contexts is reflected in linguistic forms.
With respect to syllabus content, comedy programs represent an excellent tool for studying framing for the following reasons. Comedy, unlike news programs, assumes background information, such as a familiarity with a situation, character, series of events, etc. For example, in a British TV comedy, such as "Fawlty Towers," how is one to understand the action, let alone the humor, without sufficient background knowledge of British society? In fact, comedy often relies on our stereotypes, notions, expectations, etc. to surprise and amuse us by delivering precisely the unexpected. When viewing comedies, learners become keenly aware of the significance of frames, because they realize that a knowledge of vocabulary and grammar is often insufficient to grasp the intended meaning in many situations. Unlike news (and to a large extent drama), it is not so much what you know, as how you know it.
To demonstrate this aspect of comedy, learners are asked to fill in the following blank:
2, 4, ?
Most learners answer "6," but what about "8" or "16"? Like the punchline of a joke, 8 and 16 are logical, but unexpected.
Furthermore comedies contain many "typical" scenes from life (office, home, vacationing, etc.); stereotypical characters (the dedicated Mom, the overworked Dad, the bratty, wise guy kid, the "super-smart" kid, the shy kid, the clumsy jerk, the nerd, etc.); and typical communicative functions (introductions, requests, phone conversations, family chat, polite chat, etc.).
Due to cultural differences, it is not always obvious to learners what is going on in a given scene. Are the characters fighting or joking? Is that a good guy or a bad guy? Their dilemma is predicted by Goffman's (1974) contention that no verbal or nonverbal communication move can be understood without reference to a "meta-message" about how to interpret that move. Of course learners can understand meta-messages in their own language, but they are apt to "retract their antennae" or misinterpret cues when they are "studying."
What differentiates this syllabus from others is its emphasis on the study and analysis of characters and situations in terms of frames (power and solidarity, alignment, meta-messages and so on). For example, during class activities learners are asked to identify the relationship between characters. Are they relatives, lovers, friends? If they are lovers, how would you expect them to speak to each other in public and in private? This activity uncovers stereotypes or deficits in the learners' knowledge. Once learners can identify the frame, they can begin to become more sensitive to the frame's meta-message and activate their background knowledge, i.e., schemata. This in turn leads to a deeper understanding of how language is used to serve referential meanings, and how contexts can determine the social, cultural and expressive meaning of utterances.
A specific example of how this approach is applied appears below in "§4.4.1.2. Introducing sociolinguistic topics."
Chapter 4: Application
This chapter on application demonstrates how the theoretical elements discussed in Chapter 2 can be put to practical use in creating a specific syllabus for, in this case, advanced Japanese learners of English. In the ensuing discussion, a rather traditional approach has been taken in dividing the subject matter into three areas:
Language knowledge is concerned with linguistic descriptions; i.e., vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and discourse (which in this syllabus refers to the sociolinguistic orientation of the whole);
Language behavior is concerned with how language knowledge is utilized; i.e., listening, speaking, writing and reading;
Language activities are the operations that go on in the classroom if language knowledge and language behavior are to be acquired. This includes the sociolinguistic elements that are to be introduced.
Although for the sake of discussion the subject matter has been divided in the above fashion, this is not meant to imply that these areas can actually be treated in isolation. Clearly what people say and do is connected to what they see, hear, read, feel and so on. Furthermore, there is no undisputed method to decide or predict which aspect, if any, of language knowledge or behavior will play a dominant role in learning. All that can be said with some certainty is that all these areas factor into and must be considered in deciding upon the most effective language activities.
Since language activities in a task-oriented, content-based syllabus serve as the organizing principle, they will be discussed first in §4.4 below so that language knowledge and behavior can be seen in light of this emphasis.
As stated at the outset, every syllabus manifests "certain assumptions about language, about the psychological process of learning, and about the pedagogic and social processes within a classroom" (Breen, 1984:49). It is therefore incumbent on the teacher to bring these dynamically linked elements into crystallization in the form of his or her own teaching persona, or, as is the case in this dissertation, in the form of a syllabus. In so doing, although all the elements are involved, some decision must be made as to which will be the salient features of the course. This issue shall be taken up in §4.3 below. As the syllabus content has already been discussed (§3.2), before going into the mechanics of material selection and grading, it might be best to obtain an overview of the course.
4.1. Learner Profile
The typical learner for this course is an advanced, college educated ESL student in his/her 20s, intending to study in the United States or Great Britain. However, this course is seen as preparation for the "real world," as opposed to academic life. As this is an advanced course, learners must either "come up through the ranks," or "test in." TOEIC, TOEFL, or an equivalent test may be used to make the determination for eligibility. Passing the course will depend on teacher evaluation, final test score (interview and TOEIC equivalent test), and attendance.
4.2. Course overview
The course meets for two forty-five minute periods on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for 10 weeks, and is limited to an enrollment of 12~16 people.
The course is quite flexible in terms of scheduling. It can stand alone, or be combined with a textbook, conversation, writing or other course. In any case, each unit in this syllabus takes approximately six classroom hours to complete.
The themes and topics for this course, for the reasons discussed (§3), are derived from video tapes of American and British TV programs, mostly comedies. Unlike textbooks and audio tapes, videos do not rely on the learner's ability to imagine a situation; furthermore, the added interest provided by visual stimulus increases learner motivation.
Learners are given several aids: a cassette tape and transcript of the program, a list of vocabulary items to look up, and comprehension and discussion questions, which must be answered in writing (See: §6.1). The entire class views the program together, and groups are formed to go over the vocabulary and comprehension questions, although the sequence may vary. A textbook is used for supplementary practice in idiomatic English and vocabulary expansion techniques. Once basic structures are fully understood, the field is expanded through lectures, Q&A and discussion sessions to include sociolinguistic topics (such as framing, footing, gender issues, etc.), cultural themes, and theatrical techniques, such as drama and comedy conventions (See: §6.2: "Types of Humor"). Each unit concludes with group discussions based on related topics during which learners exchange ideas and compare opinions, thoughts, experiences and feelings.
All the materials, except published and broadcast materials, are created by the author of this dissertation.
4.3. Selection and Grading of Course Materials
It is extremely difficult to draw up any global criteria for the selection and grading of materials for this course. This is due to the fact that there are just too many variables involved in the learning process. At a minimum, a balance must be struck between the constraints operating upon the syllabus (i.e., learner attitude, aptitude, commitment, etc., as discussed below), and the goals of the course (i.e., the development of more appropriate expectations, understanding and responses to utterances through the study and recognition of frames). For better or worse, this undertaking amounts to informed guesswork. This selection and grading process is thus governed by critical, albeit unquantifiable, factors such as professional judgment, prior experience and personal inclination.
4.3.1. Constraints Operating upon the Syllabus
Obviously no syllabus could possibly cover all the elements required to "master" English. This course is a clear departure from what learners in Japan have come to expect from a course. Constraints, as such, derive mainly from the materials (discussed below), and the learner's relation to the materials, for example:
Unlike structural/grammatical, notional-functional or other product-oriented syllabuses, communicative functions are embedded in the discussion. This not only makes error correction difficult, but can also blur learner objectives, and make progress difficult to perceive.
It is difficult to gauge the appropriate level due to variance among learners and materials.
There is an enormous time commitment on the part of the learner (and teacher!).
Learners may say they want to learn how to express themselves, but are often reticent to take the risk involved in talking about something painful or depressing.
Not all the learners are pleased with all the materials.
The nontraditional approach can take time to get used to.
In learning a language, students generally seek very practical results -- a level of competence in communication, understanding texts, or both. It is up to the teacher to meet these expectations through the selection and grading of materials suited to the learner.
4.3.2. Selection of Materials
The syllabus, in its design, calls for materials to be chosen that illuminate the sociolinguistic topics to be covered, and do so in a manner that is hopefully instructive and entertaining. Furthermore, this course presupposes that the teacher is familiar and comfortable with sociolinguistics.
It was suggested (§3) that comedy programs represent an excellent tool for studying framing, and should form the core of the syllabus. Not only do comedies bring into relief cultural differences in frames and learner deficiencies in schemata, they contain typical scenes and characters from daily life, as well as many common communicative functions. American family situation comedies (sitcoms) are highly recommended because characters, functions, situations, etc., are often recycled, so learners can easily build on their knowledge, and expand their understanding of frames. This will be discussed further in "§4.4.1.1. A syllabus for one week's activities" below.
On the other hand, the course need not, and perhaps should not, be limited to comedies. Dramas and news programs also offer a window on life and communication. As for dramas, the main reason for minimizing their place in the syllabus stems from the fact that repeated viewing tends to become tedious. Once the story line is grasped, interest soon wanes. Comedy, on the other hand, offers the possibility of finding something new with each viewing -- a joke that was missed or misinterpreted, or just a chance to laugh this time around. I do not know if it is a universal truth, but I believe most people (and learners are people, too!) can enjoy seeing a really good comedy over and over again, whereas a good drama tends to require long intervals between viewings to be enjoyed, making dramas unsuitable given the time restraints of the course.
Tedium is also a problem with news programs and documentaries, but the main reason militating against the use of news programs in Japan is the enormous availability of written, audio and visual materials related to news. Learners who wish to study news programs need go no further than the TV, which offers bilingual news broadcasts daily, often accompanied by study materials that can be purchased inexpensively at bookstores throughout the nation.
4.3.3. Grading of Materials
Grading material presents a far more difficult challenge than selection, but here again there are no fixed rules, only general guidelines.
As to the level of difficulty, as this is an advanced course, learners should be prepared to deal with materials that they would come into contact with in daily life. The field is somewhat leveled thanks to the testing procedure employed to determine eligible candidates, but once again due to the unruliness of "real life" materials and problems inherent in testing (See: §5 below), a great deal depends on the judgment of the teacher. Ideally the learners should feel challenged, but not overwhelmed.
In his/her assessment of the level of materials, the teacher must be guided by: i) the Learner-centered teaching initiatives (§2.1.3); ii) the pedagogic rationale for judging the worth of tasks (§2.3.3); and, last but not least, iii) his/her sense of what is appropriate.
Of course, selection and grading of materials is no less a problem with textbooks, which are usually chosen before meeting the learners, and about which little can be done after meeting them. Interestingly enough, "realia," as "real life" materials are often called, can actually provide far more latitude in aligning learners and materials. Unlike textbooks, the level can be adjusted up or down to meet the requirements of the situation. To assure a happy marriage, the teacher should:
Engage the learners in a dialogue in and outside of class as to their progress and difficulties
Frequently pause the video to ask questions and confirm understanding
Design strategies to assist learners in "finding their level," for instance:
- decide with the learner on some portion of the video, five, ten or fifteen minutes, on which the learner can concentrate his/her efforts to maximize results
- arrange supplementary materials
- arrange outside study groups
- adjust the level of the materials
4.4. Areas of Primary Focus
The areas of primary focus are discussed in this section, and specific examples are given to demonstrate how Learner-centered teaching, task-based learning and framing have been applied to syllabus design. Once again it should be emphasized that the syllabus must maintain a balance between the constraints operating upon it and its goals.
It also bears repeating that although for the sake of discussion the subject matter has been divided into the three areas of language activities, language knowledge and language behavior, these elements should not be viewed as isolated from each other, but as interacting with each other.
Finally, in addition to those points brought up in §4.3.1, the weighting of the following areas depends to a great extent on: i) time available; ii) the teacher's assessment of the learners' cognitive load, and iii) the teacher's personal philosophy regarding which aspects of language knowledge and behavior play dominant roles in learning. In the words of Wayne Booth (1967: 20): "though the author can to some extent choose his disguises, he can never choose to disappear."
The following weighting represents this author's perspective, which reflects a long association with the target group of learners for this syllabus.
4.4.1. Language Activities
The area of language activities, as used in this study, refers to the classroom operations that are directed towards the acquisition of language knowledge and language behavior elaborated below. In a task-oriented, content-based syllabus, language activities serve as the organizing principle, so this area will be discussed first so that language knowledge and behavior can be viewed in light of this emphasis.
Although there are a great many activities that go on in the classroom, certain among them will always form a core around which others may spin off. To demonstrate this, a syllabus for one week's activities is presented below in the hope that it will provide insight into the structure of the course.
4.4.1.1. A syllabus for one week's activities
(Throughout this section, kindly refer to "Zen Golf" in §6.1.)
The following syllabus is for the second week of this course. During the first week the learners have been given an overview of the course, and told what was expected of them in terms of work, time and attitude (See: §6.2: "The Ten Commandments of this Course").
As an introduction to framing (although not in so many words), the learners will have also studied "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway (See: §6.2). This is an excellent starting point, because although the learners possess the necessary vocabulary and grammar, like most native speakers, they invariably have no idea what the story is about. What is missing, of course, is the frame. Once they discover the frame (through group discussion), everything falls into place.
Finally the learners will have been taught several new strategies for learning vocabulary (See: §6.2: A Way with Words 2).
On Friday of the first week, learners will have received the first set of materials (§6.1: "Zen Golf"), and will have the weekend to look up the vocabulary words and listen to an audio cassette of the program (approximately 2025 minutes).
The plot of the animated program is as follows:
For the first time in the many years since they have been neighbors, Ted invites Harry over to his house for a beer. When Harry arrives he finds everything at his neighbor's house is better: "Your beer comes from farther away than mine; your kids like you; your wife's butt is higher than my wife's." Unable to control his jealousy, Harry storms out of the house, but not before downing the last of his beer and grabbing a few sandwiches "for the road."
Before long the families of both are involved in a series of contests of one-upmanship, all of which Harry loses. Finally the task of saving the family honor falls on Harry's third grade son, Robby, because "The fruit of my loins is better than the fruit of your loins any day." Robby is pitted against Ted's son Terry in a miniature golf tournament, and the following wager is suggested: The father of the loser will have to mow the other's lawn in his wife's best Sunday dress. But because Ted objects to the word "loser" ("It's such a harsh word"), the wording is changed to "the father of the boy who doesn't win."
Robby's sister, Elizabeth, who has an IQ rivaling Einstein's, draws the task of getting her wise guy, loser brother in shape for the contest of skills to come. After a trip to the local library where she stocks up on books, Elizabeth gives Robby a crash course in mind and body control based on Zen and other Oriental mystical philosophies.
The training pays off and Robby, who has never won anything in his life before, finds himself in a dead heat with Terry for the tournament championship. However, the stress of competition wreaks its toll on the youngsters, and they decide to put down their clubs at the last hole, resulting in a draw.
The spectators are overjoyed at this grand show of sportsmanship, but Harry is not. He demands that Ted has to mow his lawn because his son "didn't win." Ted counters that Harry is in the same boat because his son didn't win either. Harry agrees because, even though he will look ridiculous, it will be worth it to see his neighbor in a dress.
The closing scene is of the two men mowing each other's lawn in dress and heels, but to Harry's chagrin, Ted is enjoying himself because the experience reminds him of his college fraternity days.
Monday (1st period)
Learners are divided into groups of three or four and discuss the vocabulary list. Each person takes about ten words at a time. As there are many words, the learners are encouraged to skip the words or phrases everyone in the group knows, and concentrate on problematic words and expressions. The teacher moves from group to group, commenting, suggesting and answering questions. Error correction may also play a part at this point.
Monday (2nd period)
The teacher answers questions, points out additional and idiomatic meanings, and important grammar and usage points (10 minutes).
The class views the video. During the first viewing, the teacher pauses the tape every few minutes to confirm that the learners are following the story line. This is done by a combination of asking and eliciting questions (35 minutes).
Homework:
Review vocabulary
Listen to cassette
Answer (in writing) comprehension questions
Review/study transcript
Wednesday (1st period)
Learners are divided into groups of three or four and answer the comprehension questions. The teacher moves from group to group, commenting and answering questions. Error correction is again offered.
Wednesday (2nd period)
A closed caption version of the video is used for the second viewing. Closed captions are particularly effective because they give the learners an opportunity to hear and see the vocabulary words in context (See: § 4.4.2.4). During the second viewing, learners are encouraged to:
ask questions that confirm their understanding, such as "When [the character] said '' he meant [learner's guess], right?"
raise their hands when they do not understand, even if they haven't yet formulated a question completely
ask about the finer points of grammar and usage
ask about character motivation, plot development, why something is funny
ask questions outside the domain of language learning; i.e., questions about culture, psychology, society, customs, etc.
If the learners are reticent to ask on their own, the teacher should ask questions and spur activity.
At this point the field is expanded through lectures, Q&A and discussion sessions to include sociolinguistic topics (such as framing, footing, gender issues, etc.), cultural themes, and theatrical techniques, such as drama and comedy conventions. Whatever additional topics the teacher wishes to make salient in the case of "Zen Golf" would be introduced at this time. For example:
How is "power and solidarity" expressed in humor?
Why is an understanding of stereotypical characters essential to identifying frames, and creating appropriate expectations?
How do the notions of "face" differ in the West and Japan?
How is "power and solidarity" expressed in notions of competitiveness?
How do family values differ in the West and Japan?
What are some western views on Zen and Japan?
What is parody? (See: §6.2)
A specific example, supposing the first two points were to be covered, is discussed in "§4.4.1.2. Introducing sociolinguistic topics" below.
Homework:
· Review vocabulary and transcript
· Listen to cassette
· Answer (in writing) at least one of the discussion questions, and fax, email or hand to teacher for correction before Friday, if possible.
Friday (1st and 2nd period)
This time can be used for any of the following activities:
View video, or parts of the video, ask questions, and explore in detail some of the topics touched on Wednesday.
Cover supplementary materials (See: §6.2)
At least one hour for group discussion, during which learners read and discuss their answers. If discussion is lively, learners change groups, or may be permitted to continue at the next class.
Homework:
Learners have the weekend to look up the vocabulary words and listen to the audio cassette of the next program.
4.4.1.2. Introducing sociolinguistic topics
To give a concrete example, suppose the first two points mentioned in Wednesday's second period (§4.4.1.1) lesson plan were covered:
How is "power and solidarity" expressed in humor?