elt video: scott thornbury

english language teaching, also known as elt, is what i make a living on. and i thought, well, why not include a series of videos in the list of things i could say anything about. so, let’s be it, then.

this first one i caught while searching for something on british council / bbc website. to be honest, i had never seen the man who according to some has lately become a voice in the teaching of english as a second language. of his books there was one on the teaching of grammar that changed much of the way i used to teach it. in my opinion, the most striking aspect of his work (books) is his ability to take what is there (being written on language learning) and give it a spin. at the end, you say, “gee, i never thought about it or saw it from that angle.” this is clearly an invitation to always consider things from new perspectives. i hope to expand on this and his work later on.

for now, i intend to direct my attention to some interesting points of his 2 videos we see here:

• the first is on repetition. most coursebooks handle topics of units singledly. that is, unit 1 is on bees and never again you will “see” anything on bees again. he invites ts to consider using texts about bees from a different genre, ie, a poem. by the way, isn’t true that unless ss are exposed to different uses of the same word, will they be able to learn to use it.
• the second video is on register. especially topic development that deals with cohesion, which also deals with repetition. in the case of register, isn’t it true that words are associated with the situations they happen to represent. even if we use the word bee figuratively somehow we remain close to its original idea of animal. back to register, all we need to do is make ss aware of language.

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sct insights

sct for social cultural theory

motives to write come from reading: handbook of research in second language teaching and l earning by eli hinkel from a chapter written by lantolf.

i have read about the social cultural theory, on and off. which means i have not been consistent. which is a pity. why? it occurs to me it is not the type of theory that touches practical grounds. added to that, we second language teachers are so much filled up with functional approaches daily that something not so concrete gets lost easily. and yet, the theory is a beautiful one.

i’m not going to introduce it here. i felt like writing about it because i happened to run into a chapter on activity theory and task based learning, starting page 345. the dialogic nature of reading has pushed me and the result is now here:

to begin, to me the theory is like fresh air for those of us immersed in students producing concrete learning outcomes. that is, it is a theory of dynamics and not of measurable results. when either a teacher or a student knows of the latter using the language as a tool and learning it as he or she uses it, then both also know that it is a matter of time and doing and nothing else. this, for example, stands in an opposite side of a methodology that “conveniently” forces individuals to produce accurate language from day one. the so frequent concern of students due to their expectations and worries fades away.

some interesting issues result of reading the piece above

• when a task is designed with the purpose of fulfilling objectives based on needs, the learning outcome is predicted. or so the task designer thinks. with sct, this is not necessarily true. lantolf argues that we, teachers, “can only compose the circumstances and conditions that promote learning. we can not guarantee that it will happen at any given point or in any given way”.
• leontiev’s six principles for the understanding of human learning and development in activity, the first three shared with animals. of the six, the last two are the most important. they result in “meaning offers a person a high degree of freedom from what is determined”:
  • drive for gratification
  • response to a stimuli
  • learned habits and dispositions
  • social norms and expectations
  • a life-world and meaning (as opposed to an actual situation)
  • free choice
• the metaphor of the shovel versus the saw is excellent for understanding the concept of activity and its implications. if we needed to dig a hole doing it with our hands may do the job. however, a shovel is a better tool. so we learn the movement of the shovel. would the movement of a saw if we used it to dig a hole be the same as that of the shovel? in this sense, we would be predicting the way an activity unfolds. yet, this does not seem to happen when L2 learners speak. they choose to do it their L1 way. unless, they needed to pass the toefl.
• lantolf following quote summarizes: “interaction between learner and task is not a one-way but a two-way street. tasks as cultural artifacts should indeed have an effect on how learning activity emerges, but at the same time we should fully anticipate that learners will also shape the tasks in unexptected and creative ways in order to make sense of their own learning activity.
• the nature of language in sct. hopper’s emergent grammar is used as a way to explain the system of language in sct. according to hopper language code system was an invention of the greeks to simplify their language for foreigners. on the other hand, grammar is a by-product of communication: “a name for certain categories of observed repetitions in discourse”. his emergent grammar opposes the fixed code (the linguistics system) which he says is monologic: the ideal perfect knower in a homogeneous speech community. he defines grammar “not as a general abstract possession that is unifrom across the community, but is an emergent fact having its source in each individual’s experience and life history and in the struggle to accomplish successful communication”. (see page 349 for expansion on hopper’s emergent grammar)

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