BRITISH COUNCIL IATEFL OFFICIAL BLOGGER

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2014/ For the third consecutive year, EFL TEACHER TRAINING has been chosen as official British Council IATEFL blogger. Follow our posts on the event.

Does Washback Exist?

Does Washback Exist?



The notion of ‘washback’ is common in the language teaching and testing literature, and tests are held to be powerful determiners of what happens in classrooms. Claims are made for both negative and positive washback, and some writers go so far as to claim that a test's validity should be measured by the degree to which it has a beneficial effect on teaching. However, very little evidence has been presented to support the argument that tests influence teaching, and what evidence has appeared tends to be based on teachers' accounts of what happens in the classroom rather than on observations of teaching and learning. This article explores the notion of washback and advances a series of possible Washback Hypotheses. It then reviews the empirical research in general education and in language education to see what insights can be gained into whether washback actually exists, how it can be measured, and what accounts for the form it takes. The article concludes with a series of proposals for further research into a phenomenon on whose importance all seem to be agreed, but whose nature and presence have been little studied.

How We Learn and How We Should be Taught: An Introduction to the Work of Caleb Gattegno

How We Learn and How We Should be Taught: An Introduction to the Work of Caleb Gattegno

Young and Messum’s title is a welcome addition to the literature, the first of two volumes aiming to re-present the work of Caleb Gattegno (1911–1988) to a new generation of teachers. During the 1970s and 1980s, many language teachers encountered the Silent Way or heard about it at some remove. They may associate it with coloured rods and word charts, but the Silent Way is neither of those things and is better seen as the language learning application of Gattegno’s much larger vision for education, the Subordination of Teaching to Learning. Gattegno was a scientist, mathematician, psychologist, investigator of human learning, and polyglot (English, which he spoke and wrote both fluently and elegantly was his fifth or sixth language.) Some readers of this review will recall a number of Gattegno’s publications, in particular The Common Sense of Teaching Foreign Languages ([1976] 2010), The Universe of Babies ([1973] 2010), and What we Owe Children ([1971] 2010). More widely read, perhaps, were Earl Stevick’s accounts of the Silent Way, especially in Memory Meaning Method (1976) and Teaching Languages: A Way and Ways (1980). The authors of the title under review would probably describe themselves as committed students of Gattegno’s work. Roslyn Young met Gattegno in 1971 when she saw him teaching Chinese the Silent Way, and Piers Messum met him in Japan in the 1980s while learning Japanese through the Silent Way.

For many teachers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, the 1970s was a colourful time of professional excitement. The places my colleagues and I worked at thrived on the discussion and testing of rival educational theories and practices. In addition to experience of the successful ‘eclectic’ training originated by International House, teachers were likely to have a passing knowledge of a variety of approaches such as the direct method, …

Moving beyond accuracy: from tests of English to tests of ‘Englishing’

Moving beyond accuracy: from tests of English to tests of ‘Englishing’



This article examines how English is conceptualized in the domain of testing, and particularly the tendency to identify the concepts of ‘standard English’ and ‘native English’ with ‘the language itself’. I argue that such a monolithic view is inconsistent with the diversity of Englishes attestable across both native and non-native users and uses, and that this undermines the inclusion of accuracy criteria in English language tests. Adopting an alternative ‘plurilithic’ orientation, I challenge the traditional view on both cognitive and social grounds, arguing that the Englishes encountered and appropriated by non-native speakers will inevitably be qualitatively different from ‘standard English’ models, and that the effectiveness of the resources learners do develop should be assessed, where appropriate, independently of linguistic criteria. I conclude that a shift is required from tests of English to tests of ‘Englishing’: from testing how people use the language to testing what they can do with it

Welcome to The Ecphorizer

Welcome to The Ecphorizer

The Teacher Trainer Journal :: home

The Teacher Trainer Journal :: home