04.1 A RADICAL ALTERNATIVE

04.2 A new systemising of teaching material

04.3 Grammar, bad and good

04.4 Description of our "Make Grammar Talk"

04.5 Some brief discussion points about language learning

04.6 Some examples of grammar "plays" for acting

plays 2 presents and exceptions

plays Im going out tonight Dad Q A (with two presents and exceptions)

playlets Qestion Answer Q A (with 2 pasts)

something in the cellar. Depression (with some any)

04.7 Some examples of "Grammared" newspaper articles

Amazon facts plus my sample essay

Jose, hero

A modern witch and "Dave"

pacifism discussion TV version

04.8 Some examples of my "Express grammar"

New 2 pasts

some, any something anything etc + a play using this grammar

3 futures + plays

04.9 What is CLIL (language integrated learning: ie.Vehicular English in subject teaching)

04.10 What would be the base for "interdisciplinary studies"?

These 10 chpaters of A RADICAL ALTERNATIVE represent an attempt to make a flexible alternative that will address the disastrous class room failure of the present conceptualisation of language learning. I now have some 400 pages of the alternative "course" that I describe in this section 04. (see 08.2 for mt propsal to make a web site of teacher material).

I speak of a radical alternative. This needs explanation. As already pointed out at the opening of 01.1, we should not trust big "solutions" in language teaching. There have been lots of "solutions" offered in the past. What is best is to choose eclectically, everything that works. Teachers have different personalities as do pupils, so the best help is by giving everyone a wide choice while at the same time listing the basic principles behind each effective method.

I am indignant and may even seem aggressive in my general attitude to the conventional wisdom, especially in the form that it has recently taken (Portfolio etc).This is due to having seen over the years how langauge is "learnt" inside schools. In all this I do not blame teachers. The text books and their methods are more or less the same, and such Pharoah constructions as Portfolio are often forced on them. Once in an Orwellian case, I saw teachers celebrating a top down "experiment" while in private they denounced this experiment to their trade union representative. That is called pressure!

At all the schools that we have taught at in Italy,, we ask for anonymous comments after our week's teaching. Their most frequent combining praise is "enjoy" and "learn". (see comments 06.4) Practical people judge you by such results. Some important pushers of systems such as Portfolio can disapprove if the ideas behind the success are deemed "wrong"! Wierd fundamentalism!

JUST ONE OR TWO CHANGES TO THE PREMISES OF LANGAUGE TEACHING WOULD IMPROVE THINGS GREATLY

Of the "research" I've read about, this from Amsterdam made me sit up because it echoed my own trial and error findings

Some post-communicative methods like to oppose "lower-order thinking", which they equate to rote memorization, to "higher-order" skills. The former are to be avoided, the latter are the core objective. Experimental research by Hulstijn and his team at the Kohnstamm Institute ( University of Amsterdam ) indicates that higher-order skills cannot function properly in the foreign language without well developed levels of lower-order automatization (Hulstijn 1999). Quoted in "On the mortality of language learning methods" given as the James L. Barker lecture on November 8 th 2001 at Brigham Young University by Wilfried Decoo. See link for whole paper.

This has certainly been what I have been aware of in years of dealing with the school victims of the wrong didactics. In the recent period (2002-4), I have taught nearly 1500 students in Italian schools and this above assertion from Amsterdam is that which I think blows up all the nonsense of "acquiring" a language in school (as implicit in Portfolio) and the snobbish discrediting of all grammar by false liberals.

I have heard inspectors blame teachers but as long as they have to deal with the present imposed schemes and views of how we learn languages, there will be little progress. The conventional theoretical frame of Portfolio is gravely mistaken, there are plenty of common sensical teachers who ignore the experts and invent their own solutions. My objection to the present situation is that all the money is being spent on "improving" things in the wrong direction (Portfolio is an extreme example, with its expert trainers and miles of paper and 90 euro "online courses"), teachers aren't being helped. (see Framework conference talk or Portfolio conference talk).

I say we need a radical change, but some teachers in the privacy of their classrooms have already made changes. The problem ( such things as Portfolio which are inflated beyond their merits by a distracted bureaucracy giving it funding), is that ordinary teachers are badgered into adopting the abstruse salvational remedies or made to feel in the wrong if they sensibly drag their feet. I have often heard the rather hopeless observation: "it's got too big to oppose". If the Portfolio idea hadn't first captured the Brussels centre and instead had had to contend with other "experiments", it would not have grown so monstrously. In my two confernce papers both on the Framework and the Portfolio I have tried to ask the simple questions that aren't asked anymore because "everybody's-doinn- the-port- port- folio". " It must be good. No"? NO, it isn't!

Anyone who thinks he has THE answer in language teaching, hasn't seen all the graves in the pedagogic graveyard! To anyone that thinks to turn that against me, I believe in a pluralism of "right" procedures in language teaching. But these right answers are piece meal. They reside as it were, in a multiplicity of lesson plans. We can rightly object to fly blown SINGLE ideas, but accept other non exclusive add on ideas. What I object to in the Pharoah's pyramid of Portfolio, is that it is based on one or two very dubious premises, and that it is "sold" as the solution we have all been waiting for. It also issues from a bureaucratic mind set. Is it really so perfect as to justify being pushed in every corner of Europe? Where is the much trumpeted "experiment" if everyone now is made to feel paniced into accepting the implicit vision of Portfolio? It's totalitarean. Brussel cannot resist making "ice cream" and "language teaching" uniform. This is a misuse of the union of Europe.

In fact what I propose, though "radical" is not like a system such as Portfolio that needs bureaucracies, funds and 90 euro online courses (Garimond. Italy)! What I propose could be almost written on the back of an envelope! In some situations in life, one or two simple founding premises are sufficient to change a great deal. For example one could imagine how much American foreign policy might change were it to change one or two presuppositions!

In language teaching the following has to be challenged. It is significant that the distinction "acquire" and "learn" a language has become so accepted that people commonly talk of language "acquisiton". "Learn" has been discarded as flat footed in comparison to the natural "acquisition". The distinction arose from experts thinking that it would be better for the 2-3 hours of language study IN SCHOOL to imitate the natural, and painless acquisition of mother tongue infants. A crazy wishful thinking that has done huge damage. The companion premise to "acquire - not learn", is that grammar since it isn't necessary to natural acquisiton should hardly be considered.

I think in contrast that grammr is above all important as the main organising principle of the teaching material that is used in class. (see critique of Portfolio and the files on alternative material: grammar plays, heterogeneous "grammared" newspaper articles, and express grammar pages .)

The grid box "competence" descriptors of Portfolio will end up being taught to - though it will be very difficult. The word "competence" has now replaced the once equally over used "skills". Apparently Portfolio is even going to extend "cultural and intellectual competences" (ugh!). This is typical of the way public relations sales techniques of simply affirming something into existence by borowing high flown latinate words, have taken over education. Did humanistic education believe that understanding was a matter of simple "competence", like driving a car? Understanding is not a "competence", but what hope of convincing people now: education has been turned over to management consultants.

Much the same can be objected to so called "vehicular English", that is to say, teaching school subjects with the vehicle of English. An oddly named project of this sort is something called CLIL (content language integrated learning). After all we have been trying for years to speak English in class and to get pupils to speak back in English. By teaching Geography or History in English will it of necessity do better in making pupils SPEAK!?

Many issues are involved. What is important is to not be too credulous towards programs that propose and promise great things.Also we should be sure that the "results" we supposedly obtain are real and verified by external authorities who are not emotionally or financially involved in such "experiments". Incidentally in science the right attitude in experiment is to severely test out theories.

see "a system for organising language teaching". A system of "Russian dolls", the outer of which represents a "grammar island" and inside a heterogeneous set of supporting activities.

What is wrong.

•  The bad influence of the European framework. Its pan European testing system affects text books and makes the functional format dominant. This has a bad effect on teaching and curricula.

•  Grammar as an organisational principal is useful but mostly bad grammar is taught: a long winded "metalanguage" of unrememberable jargon : an Alps between us and language.

•  The European framework is another Alps impeding teaching methods.

•  Publishing houses and the conventional wisdom -

•  "Functions" + "Communicative approach"

•  Half baked distinction between "acquire" and "learn"

•  grammar was rejected years ago by theoreticians. Functions came in and now as a result bad grammar has returned!

•  School situation. Unnatural. Too fast. No focus. Dispersive. Not reinforced. Little speaking.

•  No understanding of mother tongue learning despite the unrealistic theorising about natural learning.

•  Very little is spoken and everything is explained. It is too text dependent.

•  You cannot teach anyone who is carrying years of accumulated de-motivation or boredom through unsuitable teaching.

PLEASE REMEMBER I am not blaming teachers . They, like the students are the victims of a daft didactics. The conventional wisdom has such a grip on our necks. In fact the " C ommon E uropean Framework" and "Portfolio", which are trumpeted as solutions to this poor learning are not new at all but redressings of exactly that "acquire" fallacy which has failed us in the last 25 years! Don't forget that the past inadequacy of the "communicative approach" and its progeny of text books was also once sold by experts and publishing houses! What is worse now is that where the communicative approach was something sensible teachers could toughen up, or ignore, now with the whole Brussels CEF Portfolio system and all its infrastructure of directives, ispettrici, "training" experts, exams, and glint in the eye text books, we have a totalitarian system. It has the money behind it. Its document is sent to every corner of Europe . The point is that i t's bureaucratically enforced. CEF has been pushed from Brussels , and, having somehow (??) gained strong funding, its authority is institutional rather than fully earnt or scientifically validated. It is immoveable. But, dreadful possibility, suppose Europe has got the "framework" wrong? And what happens to one of those founding concepts of scientific enquiry or democracy: " pluralism ": competing theories, endless experiment? Instead we have a desert of certainty! How total and dominant the "framework" is, can be seen by the fact that I've seen the same lesson being taught in French in Yorkshire and in English in Bolzano ! So there is a system that text books now promise to "deliver" (odious expression). It will do nothing to lessen the DISASTER of present teaching formats -

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04.1 A RADICAL ALTERNATIVE

04.2 A new systemising of teaching material

04.3 Grammar, bad and good

04.4 Description of our "Make Grammar Talk"

04.5 Some examples of grammar activities

04.6 Some examples of grammar "plays" for acting

04.7 Some examples of "Grammared" newspaper articles

04.8 Some examples of my "Express grammar"

04.9 What is CLIL (language integrated learning: ie.Vehicular English in subject teaching)

04.10 Inter disciplinary studies.