… of book reviews, let’s take a look at Bill VanPatten’s book of the same name.
While We’re on the Topic (Alexandria VA: ACTFL, 2017) by Bill VanPatten is available from ACTFL at their website.
The book is shorter than Enacting the Work of Language Instruction and is more popular in tone. While Glisan and Donato present a more work that is more academic in tone, VanPatten aims his work at the teacher in the classroom who is perhaps not as informed on research in second language acquisition. The tone is conversational, and the idea is to explain certain aspects of second language acquisition and their ramifications for the classroom to the nonprofessional.
It took a number of posts to work through Enacting the Work of Language Instruction, and this will be a multi-part series as well. However, because of the shorter length and more informal tone of While We’re on the Topic, I do not anticipate quite as many posts.
The book is organized around six principles of what BVP calls “contemporary language teaching”, a term he explains in his prologue. A short quiz precedes both the book as a whole and each chapter. This gives the reader the opportunity to assess existing knowledge about the topic. An identical quiz follows each chapter so that the reader can see what has been learned.
Today we’ll take a look at the Prologue only.
In the opening paragraph, VanPatten states his purpose for writing the book:
This book aims to bring certain basic ideas back into focus for both novice instructors and veterans.
This statement reveals some presuppositions that BVP has about what he presents in the book:
1. The ideas are basic for language teaching
2. The ideas were once a point of focus
3. That focus has been lost
4. Focusing on the basic ideas presented in the books is good for both novice instructors and veterans
VanPatten begins rightly with an attempt to define certain terms because they are key to an understanding of what he writes.
The first term is part of a tautology: “Contemporary language teaching is communicative language teacher, and communicative language teaching is contemporary language teaching.” (2017, p. vii)
VanPatten notes that “communicative language teaching” or “the communicative method” has a poor reputation in the language community. He ascribes this to the term’s becoming a buzzword and not being defined, so that it came to mean whatever anyone wanted it to mean.
(In fact, what many people considered “communicative language teaching” was simply the old Present – Practice – Perform model from the days of Grammar-Translation in new garb.)
For VanPatten, there is not a single “The Communicative Method”; rather, communicative language teaching (CLT) is adherence to six basic principles, not matter how they may be packaged – and BVP considers proficiency-based teaching, TPRS, The Natural Approach, immersion, content language instruction, and others all to be packagings of communicative language teaching.
The book’s intent, then, is to elucidate the basics of and review the underlying principles of CLT so that teachers can choose strategies and procedures, whether part of a widely disseminated approach or a “personal method”, that are based on and informed by theory and research.
Teachers don’t have to be second language acquisition researchers, but they need to have a basic understanding of the nature of language, the nature of language learning, the nature of learning in general, and the nature of communication.
Some may wish to question VanPatten’s choice of basic principles, but he notes that his book is not intended to be the end of the matter. Rather, it is a practical beginning based on two ideas: 1) VanPatten’s experience suggests that these are the “basics of the basics”, and 2) It is better to provide an introductory text that is accessible and provides a limited number of principles that can be implemented right away. Deeper learning and more nuanced understandings come with time, practice, and continued reading.
In addition, VanPattern is writing for a broad audience of people who are not scholars in language teaching or language acquisition. Instead they are teachers in training and veteran teachers who have diverse understandings of and acquaintance with second language acquisition and instruction.
We’ll take a look at the principles individually in coming posts. For now, it is enough simply to list them as VanPatten gives them (2017, p. viii):
- If you teach communicatively, you’d better have a working definition of communicative. My argument for this is that you cannot evaluate what is communicative and what is appropriate for the classroom unless you have such a definition.
- Language is too abstract and complex to teach and learn explicitly. That is, language must be handled in the classroom differently from other subject matter (e.g. history, science, sociology) if the goal is communicative ability. This has profound consequences for how we organize language teaching materials and approach the classroom.
- Acquisiton is severely constrained by internal (and external) factors. Many teachers labor under the old present + practice + test model. But the research is clear on how acquisition happens. So, understanding something about acquisition pushes the teacher to question the prevailing model of language instruction.
- Instrucdtors and materials should provide student learners with level-appropriate input and interaction. This principle falls out of the previous one. Since the role of input often gets lip service in language teaching, I hope to give the reader some ideas bout moving input from “technique” to the center of the curriculum.
- Tasks (and not Exercises or Activities) should form the backbone of the curriculum. Again, language teaching is dominated by the present + practice + test model. One reason is that teachers do not understand what their options are, what is truly “communicative” in terms of activities in class, and how to alternatively assess. So, this principles is crucial for teachers to move toward contemporary language instruction.
- A focus on form should be input-oriented and meaning-based. Teachers are overly preoccupied with teaching and testing grammar. So are textbooks. Students are thus overly preoccupied with the learning of grammar. This principle demonstrates what should be the proper approach to drawing attention to grammatical features in the contemporary classroom.
We’ll take a look at each of the above more closely. In the meantime, I hope that you will get this book, read it, and consider the research and its ramifications for teaching and acquisition.