Adapting and Writing Language Lessons/Appendix C

by Earl W. Stevick

APPENDIX C

TO

CHAPTER 3

ADAPTING A PATTERN-PRACTICE COURSE (ENGLISH)

One of the most pregnant sentences in history of language teaching was Fries' dictum that 'a person has "learned" a foreign language when he has…mastered the sound system…and…made the structural devices…matters of automatic habit.' (1947, p. 3). Even though the person who has done these things may not be a fluent speaker, 'he can have laid a good accurate foundation upon which to build' through the acquisition of 'content vocabulary' (ibid.). Since its publication, the last half of this formulation has determined the strategy of much 'scientific' language teaching, just as the first half has determined the tactics. The priority, both logical and chronological, of the basic structural habits goes unchallenged in many circles, and we sometimes act as though we think the best way to 'internalize' the 'structures' is to concentrate on them to the virtual exclusion of everything else.

A relatively recent and sophisticated representative of this tradition is the series Contemporary Spoken English, by John Kane and Mary Kirkland (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967). The first lesson of Volume 1 contains two short dialogs (total approximately 2 pages), pronunciation, rhythm and intonation drills (7 pages) and grammar drills (10 pages). The dialogs, which consist of simple introductions and greetings, have no integral relation to the drills, which concentrate on present affirmative statements with be. Most of the substitution drills may be summarized in three tables:

I	'm	in class
you	're	at church
he	's	in bed
she		etc.
Sue
John
we
they

I	'm	a farmer
Dick	's	a lawyer
		etc.

I	'm	hungry
we	're	married
		tired
		etc.

In addition, the rhythm and intonation drills include:

this		a pen
that	's	a coat
it		etc.

In keeping with one interpretation of the Friesian emphasis onstructure, there is nowhere in the book any indication as to when or how the teacher is to put across the meanings. (Many would be easy to picture or dramatize, but 'lawyer,' and the difference between 'in school' and 'in class' might pose problems.) The nearest reference to meaning is a statement (p. viii) that the vocabulary has been drawn from 'basic semantic fields.' Echoing Fries, the authors state that their goal is to teach 'with a limited vocabulary of high-frequency words, those features of English phonology and syntax which students should be able to comprehend and manipulate before proceeding beyond the intermediate level' (p. vii).

Teachers who are philosophically in communion with the authors will welcome their work and will probably adopt it. Those who reject the philosophy will also reject the book. In the field of English as a Second Language it makes little difference, for if one book is cast aside, there are still dozens of others waiting to be examined. The same is not true for seldom-taught languages, where he available courses usually number between 1 and 5. All too easily, a new teacher or language coordinator despairs of all that is in print and decides to set out on his own. But such a decision is expensive in money and time, and dubious in result. A Swahili proverb tells us that 'there is no bad beginning,' and so the newcomer, encouraged by the ease with which he has pleased himself with his first few lessons, launches yet another material-writing project.

This appendix, then, is not a review of Kane and Kirkland's Contemporary Spoken English. It is primarily addressed, not to practitioners of TESOL, but to prospective teachers and lesson writers in the so-called 'neglected languages.' Its purpose is to demonstrate how, by following a particular set of principles, one may adapt and supplement existing materials instead of rejecting them. English has been chosen for this illustration only because examples are easier to follow in a widely known language. To this end, we shall pretend that Contemporary Spoken English is one of only two or three ESOL courses in print.

The first step toward adaptation is to form a clear picture of the students, their needs and interests. This picture may take the form of a simple socio-topical matrix. Let us assume that we are adapting for an evening class of adults who live in one major part of a metropolitan area, and who speak a number of different languages but little or no English. In general, the matrix can be more specific and more accurate in smaller groups, but even the largest and most diverse class has in common its classroom or training site, and current events both local and worldwide. The matrix will also be more effective if the students feel that they have had a hand in designing it or at least adding to it. For the purposes of this illustration, however, we shall have to be content with guessing that a partial matrix might look something like this:

	getting from place to place	greetings and courtesy formulas	meetings and appointments	shopping	role as guest or host
neighbors	2	1
clerks in stores
English teacher		1
fellow students		1
people on street	2

The next step is to analyze the existing lesson for its content in all three dimensions: linguistic, social, and topical.

Linguistic content:

Dialogs: Eleven sentences, invariable except for substitution of personal names, suitable for use in introducing oneself and in exchanging morning greetings. Intonation contours are marked.

Pronunciation sections: Lists of monosyllabic words containing the diphthongs which the Trager-Smith transcription writes /iy, ey, oy, ay, aw, ow, uw/, and short phrases or sentences that include these words. (The authors do not assume that these words and phrases will be intelligible to beginning students.) Lists of phrases and sentences with the common 231↓ statement intonation pattern, realized in short utterances that have various stress patterns. Stress and intonation are portrayed 'iconically,' with an effective system of lines and geometrical figures.

Grammar sections: The sentence patterns represented on p. 85 (above), requiring the student to produce person-number agreement between a subject and the present tense of 'be,' followed by four kinds of complements. Nouns standing for locations follow prepositions, with no intervening article: all other nouns have the indefinite article.

Social content:

Dialogs: Generally suitable for adults who don't know each other, or who are not close friends. May be used 'for real' among members of the class.

Pronunciation sections: Strictly speaking, no social content at all, since they are intended only for practice in repetition.

Grammatical sections: Quite non-specific. Even the teacher and the student can hardly be said to be playing genuine social roles in a substitution drill of the type:

	Dick's in school.
in class	Dick's in class.
at home	Dick's at home.
at church	Dick's at church.
	etc.

Topical content:

Dialogs: As stated above, introductions and morning greeting.

Pronunciation sections: None. (see above)

Grammatical sections: Statements about locations, occupations, states, classification (see substitution frames on p.85). The content words in the grammatical sections are either common nouns, personal names, or adjectives. Except for the personal names, none of the content words that appear in one type of statement ever appears in another. Each list of nouns refers to several different real-life contexts, e.g. class, church, bed.

In summary, the linguistic content of this lesson is delineated with unusual clarity; the topical content is clear enough, but is unified only in terms of a grammatical criterion; the social content is almost entirely concentrated in the dialogs, which have no close relationship to the rest of the lesson. The third step in preparing to adapt a lesson is to check its components: Does it include (1) a convincing sample of language use? Does it provide for both (2) lexical and (3) grammatical exploration beyond the sample? Does it suggest (4) ways in which the students can put their new, linguistic skills to work for non-linguistic purposes that they can accept as their own?

The lesson under consideration does contain two short samples of genuine use, in the form of the dialogs. The lists of words in the drills provide for lexical exploration, and the grammar drills themselves lead the student to explore a bit of English structure. The fourth component is not overtly represented in the lesson itself, and is only hinted at in the introduction.

Finally, one may look at the individual lines of the various components and judge them according to their lightness, (Chapter 3, pp. 45 - transparency, and strength. 49)

The sentences of this lesson, with an average of three syllables apiece, show up very favorably with respect to the first of these three qualities. Most of the meanings could be put across easily without translation, and the structures are lucidly presented; accordingly, the lesson also rates well on average transparency of sentences.

Where this lesson leaves most to be desired is in what we have called 'strength.' Here is a striking demonstration that high-frequency vocabulary may still produce sentences that are relatively weak. As the lesson now stands, the students can do very little at the end of Lesson I except introduce themselves, greet one another, and go on to Lesson 2. As we have seen, the dominant dimension in this course and the one according to which the lessons are sequenced, is the linguistic. The goal of an adaptation will therefore be to enable the students, in relation to the existing linguistic framework as much as possible, to use the language in. a connected and communicative way in one or more contexts that are meaningful to them. We shall aim at non-linguistic occasions for use that have the students getting acquainted with each other and with the immediate area in which they live. The most obvious and also the simplest first step is to change 'good morning' in the second dialog to 'good evening,' since our students go to night school.

A much larger step, also in the lexical realm, is to introduce the names of local destinations: 'grade school, high school, gas station, restaurant, parking lot' etc., alongside or instead of the non-specific 'work, class, bed' etc. There are four advantages in doing so: (1) The destinations may be readily and cheaply brought into the classroom by means of locally produced color slides. (p. 92) At the same time, the slides themselves are 'stronger' in our sense because they portray places that the students have actually seen and will be seeing in real life. (2) The same list of nouns can now appear in two different substitution frames: This is a____ and We're at a ____ (p. 85). This helps to unify the lesson in the topical dimension. (3) These words and slides will be useful in later lessons, and thus strengthen the continuity of the whole book. (4) They will help clarify the grammatical facts in Lesson 1. We have noted that as the lesson now stands, nouns that follow a preposition do not have an indefinite article, while all the other nouns do. In talking about local destinations, nouns have the article both without a preposition (This is a ____.) and with it (we're at a ____.)

The suggestion that an adaptation should introduce pictures and new vocabulary should not be taken as a criticism of the original lesson for lacking them. What will be most live and real in the night schools of Arlington County Virginia, will necessarily fall flat everywhere else. On the other hand, expertly chosen vocabulary and technically excellent pictures would have been specific for nowhere, and would only have added to the cost of publication.

Having (as we hope) livened the lesson up topically by bringing in new words and color slides to illustrate we would liketo do the same in the social dimension. The simplest way to do so is to convert at least three of the substitution frames (p.85) to Cummings devices. (Chapter 3, p.59 and Chapter 6) We can do so by teaching the questions 'What is this? Where are (we)? What are (you)?' Where formerly we had only repetition and substitution drills, we now have some two-line embryonic conversations.

There is of course a price to be paid for the Cummings devices, because they introduce wh-questions. The authors of the original, who introduced yes-no questions only in Lesson 4 and wh-questions in Lesson 6, might object that this price is in fact prohibitive, since it disrupts their carefully planned sequence of structures. But each of the new question patterns is closely related to one of the statement patterns that are already in the lesson, and the mechanical aspect of changing from an interrogative sentence to its corresponding statement is the same throughout. This is then a much less serious change in the structural sequence than, say, the introduction of present tense of content verbs. The question is whether the extra weight of the new engine is more than compensated for by the gain in power. My guess is that it is.

Another slight addition in the linguistic dimension would open up further opportunities for interesting conversation. The construction with 'this' plus a noun would enable the students to handle a Cummings device like:

Where is this (gas station)?

It's (near here, on Fairfax Drive, at parkington, etc.).

Going still further, if one is willing to introduce yes-no questions at this stage, then the students could use questions like 'Is this a parking lot? Are we at the library?' and also learn each other's marital status and inquire about such states as fatigue and hunger. But this too is a question of balancing new communicative potential against increased length and complexity of the lesson. Would such an extension be justifiable? The most important fact about this kind of question is not whether the answer is yes or no, but rather who is qualified to answer it. We sometimes forget that a worthwhile answer can only come from a classroom teacher who understands its implications, and that even he or she can answer it for only one class at a time. Someone writing a case study like this one can only guess at the answer, but the same is true for the textbook writer himself. This is one reason why published textbooks are so often rejected by prospective users. It is also one reason why we must give to adaptation much more thought, time, and prestige than we have been accustomed to doing.

The final proof of the lessons, as we have said, is in what the students can now do that they recognize as immediately useful or enjoyable in its own right, or potentially so in the immediate future. Greetings and introductions, marked (1) in the matrix on p.87, are certainly socio-topical 'behavioral objectives' in this sense, and these were in the lesson from the beginning. New 'objectives' relate to the boxes marked (2) in the matrix. Although the student is still unable to carry out sustained conversation with neighbors on the subject of getting around in Arlington, he at least has some of the most crucial sentence patterns and vocabulary items. In the meantime, he can demonstrate his new ability to ask and answer questions about (pictures of) places in his immediate vicinity. This activity may be varied by reducing the time each picture is on the screen, or by putting slides in backwards, upside down or sideways.

Referring once more to Fries' famous definition, we may question whether, in fact 'to have learned a foreign language' is it itself a serious goal for any adults except a few professional linguists and other language nuts. Certainly in addition to extrinsic motivations like fulfilling a requirement or preparing for residence abroad, one needs the intrinsic rewards of esthetically agreeable activities with freguent rewards of various kinds. But the work of Lambert and others^[1] indicates that even the extrinsic motivations vary dramatically in their driving power, according to the breadth and depth of their integration with the total personality of the learner. That principle must be both the adapter's raison d'être and his guiding star.

1. See Chapter 1, p. 23