Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Issue 1
MAKING ENGLISH
UNFORGETTABLE
Enhancing Acquisition in the EFL Setting
Joan Saslow and Allen Ascher
These three Rs
ensure memorablility
in the EFL setting :
RELEVANCE
Adult EFL learners need English
to communicate with both
native and non-native speakers
of English. Content of lessons
and materials should reflect
that reality.
RE-ENTRY
Adult EFL learners lack
exposure to repeated English
input outside the classroom,
so lessons and materials must
serve as delivery vehicles of realworld language input. This is
key to avoiding fossilization.
REINFORCEMENT
Adult EFL learners need to
feel they are making progress.
Ensuring that students view
tangible progress on a daily
basis reinforces their enthusiasm
for learning English.
English?
In contrast, the language-learning experience in an environment in which the learner is surrounded by the target
language is more three-dimensional, with exposures and
practice reinforcing each other and the students facility
growing geometrically. It is, as Diane Larsen-Freeman
puts it, dynamic, complex, and nonlinear. Multiple,
varied, and repeated exposures to target language provide
an inescapable echo; immediate opportunities to practice
abound, and previously learned language can be continually observed in similar, though not identical, contexts.
The environment itself makes language unforgettable.
No wonder study in an English-speaking country is such
a powerful learning experience. The dilemma, then, facing the profession is how to overcome the quantitative
and qualitative factors inherent in the EFL setting that
make achievement of communicative competence seem
so elusive.
It has been our experience, having taught adults of all levels in both the EFL and the ESL settings, that in the ESL
settingwhere students have an opportunity to observe
spoken and written English outside of classit is reasonable and beneficial to devote most class time asking them
to produce. In the input-rich ESL setting, students are
consolidating and using language observed in the environment. Less class time needs to be devoted to
classroom presentation and observation. In the EFL
setting, on the other hand, which is input-poor,
insisting that students speak without enough opportunity
to observe leads them to silent panic, the consequence of
which is that only the most able students participate in
class. A further consequence of depriving learners of
opportunities to observe new language is that their language becomes fossilized, and their ability to engage in
discussions doesnt grow commensurately with the time
they spend in English study.
Though the criticism was valid, the fault lay more in the
pedagogy of (what many saw as) mindless parroting
than in the dialogs themselves. That fact notwithstanding,
in the EFL setting one of the most regrettable consequences of the reaction to audiolingualism was the
reduction or even disappearance of conversation models
in the communicative, learner-centered, and taskbased textbooks that followed. But learners need models
of the way people really speak English to make up for
whats lacking in the environment. Such models are an
essential point of departure on the road to expression
and should not be neglected.
Cultural factors also confound the problem of overreliance on elicitation. Students from some cultures are
naturally reticent and less likely to speak up. But even
adult learners who are not particularly shy, no matter
how motivated and anxious to speak, are often ashamed
to reveal their lack of ability and embarrassed to speak
incorrectly. So, paradoxically, some features of our
communicative methodologies work against the very
communicative goals we strive for.
A: First, _____.
B: Like this?
A: _____?
Summary
Joan Saslow
Joan Saslow is co-author, with Allen
Ascher, of Top Notch: English for
Todays World. She was Series Director
of True Colors: An EFL Course for Real
Communication and of True Voices, an
EFL Video Course. She is the author of
Ready to Go: Language, Lifeskills, and Civics; Workplace
Plus: Living and Working in English; Literacy Plus; and of
English in Context: Reading Comprehension for Science
and Technology.
Ms. Saslow has taught in Chile and the United States in a
variety of programs. She taught English at the Binational
Centers of Valparaso and Via del Mar, Chile, and French
and English at the Catholic University of Valparaso. In the
United States, Ms. Saslow taught English as a Foreign
Language to Japanese university students at Marymount
College and to international students in Westchester
Community Colleges intensive English program. She also
taught workplace English at a General Motors auto assembly plant. Ms. Saslows special interest is in distinguishing
the needs of the EFL and the ESL learner and creating
materials appropriate for each. She has an M.A. in French
from the University of Wisconsin.
Allen Ascher
Allen Ascher, formerly Director of the
International English Institute at
Hunter College in New York, has been
a teacher, teacher-trainer, author, and
publisher. He has taught in language
and teacher-training programs in both
China and the United States. Mr. Ascher specialized in
teaching listening and speaking to students at the Beijing
Second Foreign Language Institute, to hotel workers at a
major international hotel in China, and to Japanese students from Chubu University studying English at Ohio
University in the United States. Mr. Ascher taught students
of all language backgrounds and abilities at the City
University of New York, and he trained teachers in the
TESOL Certificate Program at the New School. Mr. Ascher
has an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from Ohio University.
Mr. Ascher is co-author, with Joan Saslow, of Top Notch. He
is author of Think About Editing: A Grammar Editing Guide
for ESL Writers. As a publisher, Mr. Ascher played a key
role in the creation of some of the most widely used materials for adults, including True Colors, NorthStar, Focus on
Grammar, Global Links, and Ready to Go.
REFERENCES
British Council: English 2000. In David Graddol. The Future of
English? The British Council. 1997.
John P. Comings, Andrea Parrella, and Lisa Soricone: Helping
adults persist: four supports. NCSALL. 1999.
David Crystal: English as a Global Language. Cambridge. 1997.
B.B. Kachru: Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism:
the English language in the outer circle. In R. Quick and H.G.
Widdowson (eds) English in the World. Cambridge. 1985.
Michael Lewis: The Lexical Approach. Language Teaching
Publications. 1993.
Joan Saslow: Real language: the vitamin for the student studying
English outside the English-speaking world. Longman. 1996.
Ricardo Schutz: O Ingles como lingua internacional. sk.com.br/skingl. 2003.
Sower, C. (1997). An attitude of inquiry: An interview with Diane
Larsen-Freeman. The Language Teacher, 21 (7), 27-28, 37.
Shinichi Yanagawa: English, the lingua franca of business. Daily
Yomiuri On-line. August 10, 2003.
ISBN 0-13-2385210-X