教育二班English in Elementary Schools Limitations and Possib(3)

sentences such as ‘These are rulers’. She nominated the topic to be talked about (‘rulers’) and she controlled the way the discourse developed. There seems little room in such exchanges for the kind of imp licit language learning at which young children excel. It is, perhaps, not so surprising that this beginner learner does not succeed in producing the target sentence correctly.

Now consider another example. (第二个例子的解说)This comes from a more communicative classroom where the learners have been invited to talk about a movie they have recently seen. The learner here is thus allowed to nominate the topic (‘Kung Fu’) and takes the initiating role throughout the whole exchange, with the teacher supporting what he wants to say by expanding on his utterances through confirmation checks. Notice this has some effect on the learner’s use of English ——— he moves from the grammatically elided ‘I fight ... my hand’to the grammatically well formed ‘I fight with my hand’.

I would argue that the goal of language teaching in the elementary school should not be that of trying to guide learners into producing

grammatically correct sentences but rather that of creating contexts where the students feel free to talk about topics that are of interest to them with the teacher’s supporting hand. In other words, what is needed is exchanges like the second one. How might this be achieved? In Ellis (2003) I outlined the rationale for an app roach known as task based

language teaching (TBLT). This aims to create classroom contexts where learners learn a language‘naturally’through performing a series of meaning focused tasks. A task is‘a pedagogic activity which requires communicative language use in order to achieve a pragmatic outcome other than to practice or learn language’(Bygate and Samuda (2009). It is precisely this that is not evident in the first extract and is evident in the second. TBLT serves as a means of affording learners the discourse control that will foster the implicit language learning that young learners are especially suited to.

Conclusion （建议3分钟）

Introducing English in the elementary school can serve as an opportunity for a radical change in the way English is taught ——— a change from a focus on explicit learning through exercises that control how learners use the language to a focus on implicit learning through the performance of tasks that require a primary focus on meaning and that allow learners greater control of the discourse.

Today, we have tried to look critically at the English in the elementary school policy that has been adopted by China and other Asian countries by pointing out the limitations of such a policy. Research has shown that the folk myth that a language is learned easier and more rapidly when the learner starts young is simplistic. Elementary programs that offer only a

few 40 minute lessons per week are unlikely to result in successful learning of English. Also, major problems exist in implementing elementary school English programs in Asian countries (and probably elsewhere). These problems may in fact result in an educational system that unfairly advantages learners in those schools that have the resources to overcome them. Finally, politicians and educators should not take for granted that children who start learning in the elementary school will outperform those who start later. Nevertheless, the English in the elementary school policy affords some very real possibilities. An elementary school English program offers an opportunity to introduce an app roach to language teaching(TBLT) that is more likely to develop communicative skills. Such a program can also foster the intrinsic interest in learning English that is needed for long term success. That’s all for today, thank you!

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