Learner Training and Learner Autonomy - Essay Example

Running Head: Learner training and learner autonomy Learner training and learner autonomy 1English is seen as the language which gives right of entry to education and technology, which serves as a common means of communication in global trade and commerce and is used as a lingua franca by people who otherwise do not share a language. As an outcome, competence in the language is required by people who need it for instrumental reasons and are not mainly interested in language learning as an educational experience. This means consecutively that they are probable to want the language for restricted domains of use only. As the learners are most likely to be adults whose needs are linked to their employment, special subcategories are those who need English for academic purposes (EAP). English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is a growing branch of ESP atypical to Higher Education. This can have courses be fundamentally diverse from country to country, especially while English is the medium of instruction for a scientific subject, as it is in large parts of Africa and the Indian subcontinent (Mokhtari, K., & Sheorey, R. 1994). Basically, the goal of pragmatic EAP is to fit students into existing academic and social structures, not to encourage them to question or revise those structures. Feminist pedagogy, on the other hand, assumes a need for greater dialogue across races, classes, and genders to equalize power in society and promote social change (Maher & Tetreault, 1994). When the students' needs consist of "the quick and economical use of the English language to pursue a course of academic study" (Coffey, 1984, p. 3), English for academic purposes (EAP) is offered. The incorporation of writing into the EAP curriculum, however, necessitates collaboration with the instructor in the other discipline, following what Shih (1986) calls the "adjunct model" of many university composition programs for native students. But the development of such programs for ESL students has been slow, and Shih recommends that we learn from existing programs: The potential contributions and possible limitations of the adjunct-course approach for ESL programs in general, and for preparing ESL students to handle university writing tasks in particular, remain to be evaluated. What is needed, minimally, is cooperation from subject-area instructors and ESL faculty willingness to step into subject-area classrooms and keep up with class events. For ESL instructors seeking to set up adjunct courses, the experiences of composition adjunct programs already in place for native students are a rich source of information. (p. 640) In the field of EAP (English for Academic Purposes), what might be called the 'traditional' method for instance, in published materials such as the Oxford University Press English Studies Series is to select a number of reading texts, typically simplified, within a particular subject-area, and to affix word-lists, 'comprehension questions' and 'language practice exercises' to them. There are two major criticisms that can be leveled at this approach. First, in looking for passages which are short and autonomous and which will not cause too much alarm or discomfiture to the language-teacher without specialist training in the subject-area. The inclination is to select 'semi-popular' texts (the writer communicating with a wider audience, for instance in scientific journalism) rather than 'academic' texts (the writer communicating with students of the subject, for instance in a textbook; or with his/her peers, for example in a research paper) though it is the latter the student will have to read and not the former. Subsequently, there is the danger that the materials might by stressing small points of linguistic and realistic detail, and by persuading reference to the glossary, be training students in precisely those strategies which has shown to be linked with ineffective language learning. A newer generation of materials for instance, those prepared by the University of Malaya English for Special Purposes Project (UMESPP) team at the University of Malaya have stabbed to overcome these drawbacks by selecting a proportion of texts from the textbook which students will have to comprehend in their courses, and by training students openly in the strategies of successful reading: for instance, in perceiving the overall configuration of the message, in developing the capability to predict and guess from perspective and in 'skimming' and 'scanning' for information. Whilst this work certainly represents a substantial advance on what went before, there remain many uncertain practical and theoretical problems. The first group of problems relays to the question of legitimacy. It is by now generally accepted by practitioners of EAP that texts used to teach reading must be tampered with as little as probable, and that any simplified text must be used only as a stepping-stone to the 'real thing'. Though, there are two senses in which a text subjugated for teaching purposes remains inauthentic. In the first place, it has been chosen by the teacher or material's writer as 'interesting' or as typifying a particular point or points which she or he wishes to get across. There is the danger that if the aspects which lead to the rejection of a certain text as 'unusable' or 'unreachable' are in anyhow linked to the factors which make that text hard for a student; an influential and probably unnoticed source of deformation has already been introduced. Subsequent, the text, by being incorporated in a language-teaching rather than a subject-teaching programmed, is destitute of its legitimacy of purpose. Within a subject-teaching programmed some text takes its place in a series of other teaching/learning activities (e.g. lectures, tutorials and other texts), and has a definite significance in that series in terms of what is given and new, what the student is estimated to do or to know as an outcome of reading the text, and so forth. A language-teaching programmed divests a text of these factors and these associations which are always present when 'real' knowledge takes place. In the course of a full-time processional programmed it might be possible to inspire the instructive 'placing' of a text (Candlin, Kirkwood and Moore 1978); a proletarian 'withdrawal' programmed hardly permits such a simulation. The subsequent group of problems is linked to the first, and revolves around the question of design. Generally, the practice of 'outgoing language teaching' and attempts to regulate that practice has eluded our understanding of how language is used to communicate, and how people obtain a capability to communicate in their mother tongue or in a foreign language. In this relationship, one of the major's questions raised by the Hosenfeld research remains unrequited. If understanding and expecting the 'overall message' conveyed by a text is critical, how should that message best be described In recent work, two major approaches may be discerned: following the distinction made by Kempson (1975) mainly at sentence level; and by van Dijk (1977) at text level. Studies describe one approach as based on text pragmatics and the other as based on text semantics. However, the local languages do not have prevalent acceptance amongst all the students concerned, they do not have the language to cope with the technical terminology, and there is very little in print of a specialized nature, hence English is the medium of instruction. The major problem here is to make sure that the level of English is enough to deal with the complex issue and with the demands of the learning system listening to lectures, note-taking, reading textbooks, dealing with tutorials and seminars, writing reports, essays and exam papers, and eventually carrying out the research leading to a thesis. And certainly all this should be done in English. The teacher's task here is to foster his student's study skills. There are numerous helpful courses available, such as J.B. Heaton's Studying in English (Longman, 1975). In a 1995 article in College Composition and Communication, Muchiri, Mulamba, Myers, and Ndoloi stressed the important contributions of first language composition research to the EAP community but warned us that it has necessary, and crucial, limitations. They wrote that EAP "works in multilingual settings by narrowing the range of English until it is considered teachable. Its researchers and teachers have something to learn from the broader range of English use considered in composition research and literacy studies" (p. 190). They suggested beginning a discussion between composition researchers and EAP writing teachers. Although Muchiri et al. (1995) saw the need for second language teachers and composition researchers to examine the pedagogical usefulness of current writing theory and research; we must keep in mind that such a discussion has only recently begun in the field of first language writing instruction. In the introduction to Reconciling Writing, Rethinking Writing Instruction, Joseph Petraglia (1995) wrote that "to date, there has been relatively little concerted discussion within the writing field that concentrated specifically on the fundamentally awkward relationship of writing theory and most writing instruction" (p. xiii). Petraglia's edited collection focuses primarily on the (mainly American) practice of teaching first-year composition (what he refers to as "general writing skills instruction") in a university. In numerous other countries in the world, particularly where English is a foreign, rather than a second, language, it is very widespread for a teacher to be confronted with a group of medical students or engineers who have little existing knowledge of English and demand to be taught how to read their technical books and journals, and nothing else. They have no requirement to write in English or even to speak it. Their need is for a course in reading technical English. It is possible to give this by starting with very elementary instances of the written word and by taking the students through a cautiously graded sequence of texts with profuse commentary in their mother tongue. A better approach is to argue, first, that this is in fact a mistaken, short-term view of what is desired. There is always an opportunity to use the skills of writing, speaking and listening, whatever one's immediate circumstances. Numerous write reports or articles for publication in international reviews. Others should talk to and understand expatriate colleagues and visiting lecturers. With the simplicity of travel today, many must surely travel outside their own country to international conferences and courses, where English will surely be widely used. And it is an essential precondition for many scholarships that the candidate has a good level of English. The second argument is academic. It might well be that the best way to learn to read efficiently in English is to pay particular consideration to this skill only after the thriving completion of a general course in all the skills. This is a very significant premise, with implications for all ESP teaching, and there is substantial debate about it (Moll, L. C. 1990). To have Learner training and learner autonomy as some central elements on an EAP, it requires a reckoning with how the field positions itself in comparison with institutions, programs, funding agencies, academic classes, and students. It calls for greater discussion of what jobs EAP teachers are eager to accept, basing their decisions not solely on financial deliberations or the attractive perquisites of international travel. It calls for further contemplation of the role of EAP teachers: Are they to be trainers, carrying out target aims uncritically, or educators, imagining with students a more just world Or both How might EAP narrate needs and rights in their analysis of the target Will EAP teachers act as advocates for inclusion or will they enact exclusionary policies aimed at keeping out nonelite students Will they construct EAP completely as academic and workplace preparation or also as a place where students can shape and alter what is being offered to them Customary EAP's ideology of pragmatism does not heave concerns about the relationship of EAP teachers to official curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment (Pennycook, A. 1996). Instead, it presumes that their role is to prepare students for the requirements they face or will face in their academic classes. These political positions emerge as neutral because it upholds the status quo, yet it is no more impartial than one that interrogates existing demands and assumptions (Benesch, 1993). Myles Horton (1990), founder of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, USA, clarifies the myth of neutrality as the normalizing of the status quo and shows that political choices are inevitable in the course of living: Neutrality is just another word for accepting the status quo as universal law. You either choose to go along with the way things are, or reject the status quo. Then you're forced to think through what you believe. If you're going to be for something, then you have to know there's an opposite that you're against. That runs contrary to the traditional thinking in this country [the US]: you're supposed to be positive, for something but not against something. But it's impossible to be for anything without being against something. You have to clarify what you're against, and once that's figured out, you have to determine how to do something about it. You say, "OK, this is the kind of world I'd like to see, these are the kinds of values that seem important to me." Then you have to figure out how to work so that it affects people. (Horton 1990, pp. 139-140) Horton, a social activist, offers a plan for how to think fairly. He begins with an assumption: You either acknowledge the way things are as natural and inevitable, or call the status quo in to question. Once you decide to interview the way things are, you consider alternatives, based on the type of world you believe is just, thereby descriptive your values. Next, you seek actions to enact those values. Horton (1990) describes the association between what is and what might be as the operation of two eyes. Teachers train one eye on students to distinguish what they are concerned with, in the "here and now." They focus the other eye on a more hopeful future, a world where equality and democracy succeed. The association between teaching content and teaching language might as well be an area of conversation between EAP and content teachers. They could talk concerning how academic power relations tend to position EAP as a service to pleased demands and about possible alternatives to that positioning. In doing so, they might divulge their assumptions about respective responsibilities, perchance educating each other concerning the challenges of doing their jobs. Rather than mechanically assuming a one-way transfer of information from a content teacher to students with EAP boosting that type of teaching, they might consider ways both classes could ease student contribution and inquiry, through talking and writing. References: Coffey B. (1984). "ESP--English for specific purposes [State-of-the-art article]". Language Teaching: The International Abstracting Journal for Language Teachers and Applied Linguists, 17, 2-16. Shih M. (1986). "Content-based approaches to teaching academic writing". TESOL Quarterly, 20, 617-648. Kempson, R. (1975), Presupposition and the Delimitation of Semantics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van Dijk, T. A. (1977), Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse, London: Longman. Candlin, C. N., J. M. Kirkwood and H. M. Moore (1978), 'Study skills in English: theoretical issues and practical problems', in R. Mackay and A. Mountford (eds), English for Specific Purposes, London: Longman, 190-219. Benesch, S. (1993). ESL, ideology, and the politics of pragmatism. TESOL Quarterly, 27, 705-717. Horton, M. (1990). The long haul: An autobiography. New York: Doubleday. Pennycook, A. (1996). TESOL and critical literacies: Modern, post or neo TESOL Quarterly, 30, 163-171. Petraglia, J. (1995). Introduction: General writing skills instruction and its discontents. In J. Petraglia (Ed.), Reconceiving writing, rethinking writing instruction (pp. xi-xvii), Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Muchiri, M. N., Mulamba N. G., Myers, G., & Ndoloi, D. B. (1995). Importing composition: Teaching and researching academic writing beyond North America. College Composition and Communication, 46, 175-198. Mokhtari, K., & Sheorey, R. (1994). Reading habits of university ESL students at different levels of English proficiency and education. Journal of Research in Reading, 17, 46-61. Moll, L. C. (1990). Introduction, In L. C. Moll (Ed.), Vygotsky and education: Instructional implications and applications of sociohistorical psychology (pp. 1-16). New York: Cambridge University Press. Read More