Language Education in English Education

I became interested in language as an object of study when I lived in Northwest Alaska. Then, I was interested in the interrelations of language and culture. When I returned to the "lower 48" for a doctoral program, I began to look at language "in situ" -- language spoken in particular situations, primarily in the classroom.

For my first faculty position, I had to teach a course on language to prospective English teachers. As a teacher educator without a formal linguistics background assigned to teach a course in "Language and Linguistics," I spent quite a bit of time and energy searching for an answer to the grammar question - i.e., what should an English teacher do when instructed to teach grammar? "Odyssey of a teacher educator" describes what I found.

"A meaning-based model" gives a brief explanation of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which is a description of language that is better known in other English-speaking countries than in the U.S. SFL has influenced English Education in Great Britain and Australia (see "English Language Education outside the U.S.; "Australian Genre pedagogy" and "Critical approaches to language and discourse"). In both Great Britain and Australia, linguists who wanted their knowledge to be of use to teachers and teachers who wanted to develop linguistically informed curriculum and instruction worked together.

"The Little Red Book" refers to one of the products of one of the first collaborations between linguists and educators. The official title of the book is Language in Use; it's not actually a book but a loose leaf collection, in a red binder, of curricular activities designed to SHOW, not tell, students how language works. "The Little Red Book" has been out of print for years, but those who know it are enthusiastic proponents of putting it back in circulation. With the approval of Michael Haliday, the text is now available here.

Within the U.S., the field of linguistics has had much less influence on education than the field of psychology has had. Linguistics is not a unified discipline; the term "language" and even the narrower term "grammar" carry multiple meanings; and in the U.S. there has been less conversation about language in English education than in Language Arts at the elementary level. However, in the wake of the movement to raise standards in public education, interest in "grammar" instruction has been on the rise. Unfortunately, those who advocate the teaching of grammar disagree about what "grammar" refers to. There is periodically heated debate on the discussion list for ATEG, the Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar, of the National Council of Teachers of English, and recently, an emergent consensus on principles for a curriculum specific to grammar instruction. In this case, "grammar" refers to formal description of the language system. The details of a curriculum are still very much in contestation. I have excerpted messages from the ATEG list and another list ("Teach-Ling") specific to the teaching of linguistics (but typically at the post-secondary level), to give an overview of the debates and issues regarding language instruction in English Education here in the U.S. See "Grammar instruction in North America."

Bibliographies and links on topics related to language in English education are still under development, but available (see side bar menu). Some of the bibliographical references are linked to abstracts from various sources, primarily ERIC.

                                        LINKS ON THIS PAGE

language and culture                              Odyssey of a teacher educator           

A meaning-based model                         English Language Education outside the U.S

Language in Use                                    Grammar instruction in North America

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