WEB-ресурс научно-практических конференций

Курьянова Н.В., Батушанская О.М.

МОУ «Лицей №37» Фрунзенского района муниципального объединения «Город Саратов», Российская Федерация

PERSPECTIVES OF METHODOLOGY IN THE 21 ^ST CENTURY

Discussing the future of anything is always challenging, especially the future of language teaching. The conservative temptation is to assume that things will carry on much as they have in the past. After all classrooms have maintained their familiar organization for a thousand years. Why then should methodology after radically if the classrooms stay the same? The alternative is to predict a science-fiction future in which the future is nothing like the present.

Our predictions will address both temptations. Some of the predictions assume the carrying on and refinement of current trends; others appear more like science fiction in their vision.

Next phrases in language teaching methodology

In assembling our methodological predictions, we have borrowed ideas from other commentators and have created some scenarios of our own. Some of them are based on experience of the last century, others are somewhat idiosyncratic but draw on material already existing outside the immediate purview of language teaching.

The methodological predictions are follows:

1. Teacher\Learner Collaboration: Using match-making techniques to link learners and teachers who have similar styles and approaches to language learning.

2. Method Synergistic: Crossbreeding elements of various methods to find those practices which best support effective learning.

3. Curriculum Developmentalism: Viewing methodology as an integral component in a larger view of instructional design.

4. Content-Basis: Assuming that language learning is a by-product of a focus on meaning, on acquiring some specific topical content.

5. Multi-intelligence: Basing instruction on a «multiple-intelligences» view, in which different approaches play to different learner talents.

6. Total Functional Response: Reconstructing the National\Functional idea with some new systemic twists.

7. Strategopedia: Teaching learners the strategies they need so that they can learn on their own.

8. Lexical Phraseology: Recrafting both the nature and substance of language learning to focus on lexical phrases and collocations.

9. 0-Zone Whole Language: Engaging all aspects of language study – literature, language history, linguistic, analyses, and so forth – in support of second language learning.

10. Full-frontal Communicativity: Engaging all aspects of human communicative capacities – expression, gesture, tone, and so forth – in support of second language learning.

In this report we have given a brief outline sketch of one of the methods, namely Lexical Phraseology.

Lexical Phraseology.

Lexical Phraseology is based on an alternative view to the one that sentence creation is largely innovative, and any model of language must account for the capacity of every human being to create and interpret sentences that they have never produced or heard previously. In contrast, lexical phraseology view holds that only «a minority of spoken clauses are entirely novel creations» and that «memorized clauses and clause-sequence form a high proportion of the fluent stretches of speech heard in every day conversation…The number of memorized complete clauses and sentences known to the mature English speaker probably amounts, at least, to several hundreds of thousands .» (Pawley and Syder 1983)

The large scale computer studies of language corpora have examined such patterns of phrase and clause sequences as they appear in samples of various kinds of texts, including spoken samples. For language teachers, the results of such inquiries have led to conclusions like those of James Nattinger (1980.341).

«Perhaps we should base our teaching on the assumption that, for a great deal of the time anyway, language production consists of piecing together the ready-made units appropriate for a particular situation and that comprehension relies on knowing which of these patterns to predict in these situations. Our teaching, therefore, would centre on these patterns and the way they can be pieced together, along with the ways they vary and the situations in which they occur».

«If, indeed, the mature English speaker knows several hundred thousands» of such ready-made expressions, what should the language teacher and learner do in response to this knowledge? Is massive memorization possible or recommended? Is prolonged immersion in an L 2 environment the only answer.

The practical implications for language teaching of these observations on the repetitive habits of native speakers in their speech and writing have only begun to be explored. One author proposes an «L1\L2 contrastive approach» to the study of lexical collocations, suggesting that «the teaching of lexical collocations in EFL should concentrate on items for which there is no direct translational equivalents in English and in the learners’ respective mother tongues»( Bahn, 1993).

Some ideas for grouping and sequencing lexical phrases and clauses for L2 have been offered by a number of authors. However, these are preliminary proposals and do not adequately address the enormity of the learning task that earlier-quoted commentators suggest. Lexical phraseology is an approach in search of a methodology, and this search will be one of the major LT enterprises of the coming decades.

Conclusion

In this report we have provided an overview of one potential path that ELT teachers might find themselves travelling in the opening years of the new millennium. We know that teachers will be blazing many new trails of their own, and we encourage you all to share your experiences with your colleagues.

References

Bahns J. ,1993 , Lexical collocations: a contrastive view, ELT Journal, 7,1 pp. 56-63

Nattinger J., 1980, A lexical phrase grammar for ESL. TESOL Quarterly, 14, pp. 337-344

Pawley A., and F. Syder. 1983, Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Native-like selection and native-like fluency in Language and communication. Eds.J.Richards and R.Schmidt, London : Longman