Language in Use 7-10
What is Language in Use?
This volume contains a new approach to language for the teacher of English.
It is written for the teacher and consists of I 10 individual units, each one of which provides an outline for a sequence of lessons. Each outline is built around a topic concerned with the way we use language. There is a headnote to each unit which describes this topic and indicates what a class might achieve by exploring it. The units are grouped together in ten themes, each of which is concerned with one major aspect of Ianguage in use. In turn, the themes are drawn together into three broad divisions representing the nature and function of language, its place in the lives of individuals, and its role in making human society possible. These three divisions provide the basis for tile three parts of the volume.
The individual unit is a plan for a sequence of lessons. Each numbered paragraph outlines a programe of activity which could occupy a class for a minimum of forty minutes. In many cases, however, the contents of one paragraph will provide the basis for work stretching over a much longer period of time. How much time is used depends upon the needs and interests of a particular class and the judgement of its teacher, because all that the unit does is to sug gest what can be done. It does not impose rigid divisions, either of time or of activities. Only one or two sessions of a unit need be used, if that is appropriate, because the unit offers a progressive exploration of its topic, and does not, therefore, require to be worked through from beginning to end in order that a class shall benefit from the work done. The units can be used individually, or in sequences devised by the teacher to meet his particular needs; as a basis for distinct English language periods, or integrated into tile day-to day work of a class.
This flexibility in the use of units is given practical expression in the loose-leaf form of binding. A teacher may, therefore, easily extract units, re-arrange them, or add to them according to his own syllabus requirements.
The units can be used with pupils over a very wide range of age and ability, and also with students in Colleges of Education and Further Education. This exceptional flexibility has been achieved by writing tile units for the teacher and confining the text to the outline of a sequence of work, rather than its detailed specification. The Outline is Concrete and
practical, setting out quite clearly what can be done, so that a teacher has no difficulty in deciding how any particular unit might meet the needs of a class, yet the actual shaping, pacing, and detailed content of the lessons is left in his hands. In particular, the teacher himself must decide what kind of comment lie will require from pupil or student, and what lie requires, whether written or spoken, determines the actual 'difficulty' of any particular piece of work.
To help the teacher find his way through the volume, and to assist his choice of units, each part has a short introduction which sets out the scope and interest of the themes that it contains and explains their relationship to each other. Each introduction also makes a few general points about language and its use, which relate in particular, to the themes in that part of the volume. Each theme, in turn, has its own introduction which comments briefly upon the units contained in it, and upon their relationship to each other. Finally, the headnote of each unit states the aim of the unit and outlines the particular facet of language in use which it focuses upon.
Language in Use does not ask for any special reading or preparation on the part of the teacher. In writing it, the aim has been to provide an approach to the study of our own language that neither demands of' the teacher specialised knowledge of Linguistic Science, nor requires of the pupil mastery of analytical procedures and unfamiliar technical terms.
Although the approach to language that we offer is new, much in these. units will be familiar, because they draw upon all that has been achieved in the field of English teaching over the last two decades, two decades that have seen more thought and energy devoted to the problems of the English class than any previous period. Looked at from one direction, Language in Use is a radical answer to the old question, 'What do we do about their English?' Looked at from another, it is a compendium of good practice, written up in such a way that any teacher can draw upon it at need. For the experienced teacher, it offers a collection of many things that he would most certainly do more often, if only the pressure of work let him remember them in time; while for the beginner, it offers support and guidance in attempting many things which his training recommends, but which the realities of the school setting often seem to put beyond him
Language in Use is concerned with the relationship between pupils and their language. This relationship has two major aspects: what pupils should know about the nature and function of language and how they can extend their command of their own language in both speaking and writing. The units aim to develop in pupils and students awareness of what language is and how it is used and, at the same time, to extend their competence in handling the language.
Language is unique as a subject matter for the class-room, because the vast majority of pupils come to school possessing a command of their own tongue sufficient to meet their needs as members of the community In which they live. In this sense, no matter how inadequately they may appear to meet the linguistic demands made upon them in school, they possess extensive knowledge of the language. In addition, as a natural consequence of speaking a language, they possess strong intuitions about its nature and function, but these remain for the most part undeveloped. What the units do is to start from that native intuition and work towards a much more developed awareness of the part which language plays in the lives of men and society, and the means it has for playing- it. Awareness is not, therefore, a vague notion at all. It is closely parallel to the kind of sensitivity towards human feelings and relationships which every teacher of English hopes to develop in his pupils through Ill.,; use of literature.
Language in Use does not require pupils to make detailed and explicit analytical statements about the topics which the units explore; consequently the development of awareness does not entail the learning of a body of facts about language. It is a process by which pupils Come to understand much more fully than before the nature of their own experience as users of language. The degree to which this understanding comes to be formulated explicitly in -what they say and write about language depends upon their own capacities and the judgement of those who teach them.
The first aim of Language in Use is achieved when pupils explore some facet of their own experience of language through following out the sequence of a unit, and thus come to a new awareness of its meaning for them, how it relates them to the world or to people. The second aim, the development of their command over spoken and written English, is pursued through the activities which the units recommend. These activities include many things which are now familiar to teachers of English, such as the use of groups of varying sizes; of enacting, both improvised and scripted; of writing, which is directed to a specific task or arises out of small group discussion and is then subject to comment by other members of the class. It is just these activities, however, which seem most likely to encourage growth of competence. Competence in one's own language. is a complex matter and, as yet, we do not know as much as we would like about the processes by which we acquire language and extend our knowledge of it. What we do know, however, underlines the value of those activities just mentioned for encouraging the growth of competence, both spoken and written.
As ordinary human beings, we use language in specific contexts to say those things we have chosen to say. In other words, when we use language as members of a family, or of a community, in the ordinary course of living, we always know what we want to say, why we want to say it, to whom we are saying it, and what the circumstances are. Our command of our language extends as we meet new situations and have to find linguistic expression to match the demands they make upon us. It is therefore necessary that the conditions for using language in school be similar to those in the world outside, if they are to have any effect upon pupils' competence.
The enquiries outlined in the units lead to awareness: the way they are carried out leads to growth of competence. There is, however, a crucial relationship between the two. The long argument over the teaching of 'grammar' in schools really concentrated upon the effects of a certain kind of explicit knowledge of the language, such as classification of words and parsing, on pupils' use of language. When teachers discovered that there seemed to be no observable effect of the one upon
the other, they rejected teaching about language, because they could see no justification for it. It was unfortunate that the study of language came to be identified with a rudimentary and inadequate type of knowledge about language, and that its validity was judged solely upon its power to increase competence.
Language in Use offers a form of language study which can be valued as a rewarding end in itself, namely the development of awareness. However, a basic premise of the volume is that the development of awareness in the pupil will have a positive effect upon his competence, although this effect is likely to be indirect and may not show up immediately. A second premise is that what is well-rehearsed through being talked out in discussion, especially where the discussion involves ,groups of three to five, will have a similar oblique, delayed, but quite positive, effect upon pupils' command of the written language.
Many teachers are now aware of the fact that educational failure is very often linguistic failure. A special feature of the volume, therefore, is the provision Of units that help the pupil to meet the linguistic demands of a subject-based curriculum. Whatever their potential, pupils often find themselves unable to handle the language which the processes of explicit analysis and impersonal comment require, and it is the use of language of this kind that makes up so large a part of the working lives of most pupils. The development of awareness has a marked effect upon a pupil's ability to cope with the whole range of his work, because lie comes to see that many problems are not so much problems in grasping the content of what he studies, but problems in handling the language appropriate to it.