Applying community learning via learning tasks in efl classes

Microsoft Word 09 dinhthiminhien TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG SỐ 6(79) 2014 Quyển 2 39 APPLYING COMMUNITY LEARNING VIA LEARNING TASKS IN EFL CLASSES ỨNG DỤNG PHƯƠNG THỨC HỌC CỘNG ĐỒNG[.]

TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG - SỐ 6(79).2014 Quyển 2 39

APPLYING COMMUNITY LEARNING VIA LEARNING TASKS IN EFL CLASSES

ỨNG DỤNG PHƯƠNG THỨC HỌC CỘNG ĐỒNG QUA HOẠT ĐỘNG LỚP

TẠI CÁC LỚP TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGỮ

Dinh Thi Minh Hien

The University of Danang, University of Foreign Languages; Email: minhhien02@yahoo.com

Abstract - This paper is in the fields of Second Language

Acquisition (SLA), task-based learning (TBL), focusing on

Community Learning (CL) which is based on the theoretical

background of Richard-Amato (1996), Ashworth (1985) and Brown

(1994) In light of CL, learning tasks in EFL (English as a Foreign

Language) classes are somehow similar to daily activities in the

real world, or, in other words, the class itself is a miniature of the

society in which, via learning tasks, students are seen as citizens

who are taking part in various social activities The main focuses of

the paper are classroom interaction which pays attention to the

learning process, and learners’ communicative competence which

lays emphasis on the learner’s language skills The paper provides

EFL teachers with many CL tasks that might help them create an

effective classroom interaction It also helps EFL students improve

their communicative competence that might be beneficial for them

to integrate into a global working environment in the future

Tóm tắt - Bài viết này thuộc lĩnh vực Thụ đắc ngôn ngữ, học ngoại

ngữ thông qua các hoạt động lớp theo Phương thức học cộng đồng dựa trên cơ sở lý thuyết của Richard-Amato (1996), Ashworth (1985) và Brown (1994) Theo quan điểm Học cộng đồng, hoạt động trong các lớp chuyên ngữ Anh gần giống như những sinh hoạt thường ngày ngoài xã hội, hay nói một cách khác, lớp học chính là một xã hội thu nhỏ mà qua các hoạt động trong lớp, sinh viên được xem như là những công dân đang tham gia vào những sinh hoạt xã hội Bài viết chủ yếu đề cập đến sự tương tác trong lớp đặt trọng tâm vào quá trình học và khả năng giao tiếp của sinh viên chủ yếu dựa vào kỹ năng tiếng Bài viết cung ứng nhiều hoạt động lớp theo Phương thức học cộng đồng giúp giáo viên chuyên tiếng Anh tạo được sự tương tác hiệu quả trong lớp học Nó cũng giúp sinh viên chuyên ngữ Anh nâng cao khả năng giao tiếp giúp ích cho việc thâm nhập vào môi trường làm việc toàn cầu trong tương lai

Key words - community learning (CL); EFL (English as a Foreign

Language); learning tasks; classroom interaction; communicative

competence

Từ khóa - phương thức học cộng đồng (CL); tiếng Anh như môt

ngoại ngữ (EFL); hoạt động lớp học; sự tương tác trong lớp học; khả năng giao tiếp tiếng Anh

1 Overview

This paper is in the fields of Second Language

Acquisition (SLA), task-based learning (TBL), focusing on

Community Learning (CL) which is based on the theoretical

background of Richard-Amato (1996), Ashworth (1985) and

Brown (1994) In light of CL, learning tasks in EFL (English

as a Foreign Language) classes are somehow similar to daily

activities in the real world, or, in other words, the class itself

is a miniature of the society in which, via learning tasks,

students are seen as citizens who are taking part in various

social activities The main focuses of the paper are

classroom interaction which pays attention to the learning

process, and learners’ communicative competence which

lays emphasis on the learner’s language skills The paper

provides EFL teachers with many CL tasks that might help

them create an effective classroom interaction It also helps

EFL students improve their communicative competence that

might be beneficial for them to integrate into a global

working environment in the future

The idea that “No man is an island and neither is a

classroom” (Ashworth, 1985) suggests the viewpoint of

bringing the real world into education for years, especially

in the modern time This sounds more significant when the

author stated that “language teaching, in its various forms,

benefits society in various ways and to varying degrees”

(Ashworth, 1985:3) The relationship between language

teachers and the various communities that they serve and

that serve them is easily seen through the fact that

communities supply a wide range of resources and exercise

control over language teaching programs This has been

recognized through the roles that communities play in

foreign language teaching (FLT) in which communities are

seen as beneficiary, as resourse and as control

In Community learning (CL), the classroom is thought

of as a miniature of the real society, where social interaction takes place, providing the basis of shared experiences which hold members of the group together (Little and Sanders, 1989) All these notions do set the meaning of CL apart from

‘co-operative learning’, which simply means a form of learning often taking place inside the classroom through group work or pari work CL, in this view, has a broader and greater significance than people have normally thought of as

‘co-operative’ It became more important when Little and Sanders, in their article “Classroom Community: A Prerequisite for Communication”, asserted its decisive role

on authentic communication by “ true communicative language learning requires something far more significant than a shift in classroom management techniques In fact, communication does not actually take place in the classroom unless the language learners are a community” (Little and Sanders, 1989: 277)

Sociologically speaking, CL also means learning about the various communities in the real world which serve individuals and which individuals will serve them in their own lives The main focus of this paper is to investigate classrooms as communities for social interaction On the basis of CL viewpoint, communities are conssidered as beneficiary, resource and control for the purpose of language planning or syllabus development

1.1 The Community As Beneficiary

Being regarded beneficiary (Ashworth, 1985: 3), individuals as well as communities might benefit from education in general, and from language teaching programs

in particular “Formal education plays a substantial role in

40 Dinh Thi Minh Hien assistint people to build worthwhile lives and to contribute

to society It has, therefore, both a personal and a social

relevance: It serves individuals and the community”

(Ashworth, 1985: 28)

Nowadays, no nation can stay isolated from the world

around The same thing is true in Vietnam, a member of

the international community EFL teachers in Vietnam

have recognized that the students who are struggling with

English in their classes today may tommorrow be leaders

in trade, politics, religion, education, science or

technology EFL programs in Vietnam begin in primary

school to through college and university The objectives of

these programs vary according to the students’ ability and

aims as well as the short- and long-term goals of the

community or nation So far this has been a matter of

consideration in Vietnam

FLT is the key to thoughtful behaviour and to good

personal relationships among people of different linguistic

and cultural backgrounds It opens the door to various

vocations, and to great literature It helps produce reflective

citizenry In other words, language teaching programs are

seen as a response to individual and community needs

The benefits that the individual derive from language

programs are a sense of self-worth, of personal identity,

and a good attitude towards speakers of other languages

He might have broader cultural horizons, fluency and

literacy in two languages while still remaining the first

language Language programs help the individual with his

intellectual development as he shifts from one language to

another, give him an equal opportunity for a sound and

enriched education They provide him with chances to

enter the workforce, the social, religious or political life of

the community or with wider carreer posibilities

With language programs, community might profit a

language-proficient workforce, a succesful integration of

new comers into the community and an educated citizenry

who contribute to and participate in the life of the

community through their ability to use the target language

It is also through language programs that the community

benefits from the public validation of particular languages

and cultures, public acknowledgment of the linguistic

make-up of the community and greater tolerance and

appreciation of other languages and cultures results in a

greater harmony in the community

In short, the nation, through language programs, benefit

from it an ability to govern and to offer offices to its

citizens through language they understand, to compete in

international trade market The nation also benefit from

language programs the capacity to access to the findings of

science and technology published in other languages and

to engage in dialogues with other nations (Ashworth, 1985:

29-30) English programs, therefore, are of great help in

terms of gaining profit from increased industrialization

through knowledge of modern science and technology, and

above all, national unity

1.2 The Community As Resource

While the community is regarded as beneficiary of what

goes on in educational institutions, it is also their primary

resource The community provides a wide range of human and material resources, which is of great help for these language institutions to accomplish their objectives In recent years, there has been a considerable support for having students intergrate into the community to serve it and to learn from it, and conversely for having teachers from the community bring their knowledge and skills into the classroom As a result, the role of the teacher has changed from that of the omniscent to that of facilitator of learning, which has resulted in bringing the community and its students closer together through the use

of community resources

In fact, a community is more than just a group of people It may be an ideology, a relationship, a function, a purpose, a situation, an event or something that binds its members together Ashworth stated that a community may

be a social, political, economic or administrative unit; or it may be an ideological, ecological or linguistic unit It may

be enclosed by narrow or broad geographic boundaries A community may be a formal, legal, long-lasting unit or an informal, ad hoc, short-term unit Interaction may occur horizontally among peers or vertically through a hierarchy Cohesion between members of the group may be very tight

or very close” (Ashworth, 1985: 32-3)

The benefits which communities receive from education are enormous Community involvement in educational issues can strengthen the ties between educational institutions and citizens, helping them to develop jointly a better understanding of problems and solutions, binding them together with a sense of purpose Formal education plays a substancial role in assisting people to build worthwhile lives and to contribute to society (Ashworth, 1985: 37)

Community involvement should, therefore, be a matter

of concern in public education in general, and language teaching, in particular Teachers planning to use community resources can format their tasks as follows: (i) conduct a survey of the community by personal visits, telephone calls, or questionnaires; (ii) contact those whose services may meet the learning needs of the students; (iii) build up a network of people knowledgeable about particular resources in the community of interest to students; and (iv) notify the community of the kind of resource needed of a particular group of students and hope for a good response (Ashworth, 1985: 41)

To meet the gap between the classroom and the communities, Ashworth (1985: 42) suggests that teachers may focus on the following topics: (i) Community services; (ii) Consumer education; (iii) Employment; (iv) Family life; (v) Other cultures; (vi) Health; (vii) Law; (viii) Recreation; (ix) education; (x) Politics; and (xi) History Additionally, to support teachers with community-oriented teaching, Ashworth suggests some learning tasks such as: (i) Volunteers, (ii) Colleagues, (iii) Guest speakers, (iv) Relia, (v) Field trips, (vi) Student-community contact, and (vii) Local communities

1.3 The Community As Control

Community as control over language teaching “ lies

with those who have the power to decide who will teach

TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG - SỐ 6(79).2014 Quyển 2 41

which language to whom, when, where, and for how

long ” (Ashworth, 1985: 68) However, since no two

classrooms and no two communities are exactly identical,

the degree of control that individual teachers can exercise

over their teaching situations varies considerably

The answers to the functions implied in the above italic

terms relate to the three major components in any language

teaching classroom: students, teachers and

curriculum/program These can be seen in the following

illustration as a triangle with constant interactions among

the components

Student

Teacher Curriculum/Program

Figure 1 Three components needed for a CL language program

(Ashworth, 1985:68)

Language teachers have different degrees of control

over the details which make up the characteristics of the

three components: they have no control over students’

socio-economic status, some control over their working

conditions and total control over the choice of textbooks It

is necessary for teachers to be aware of those areas over

which they can exercise with control and those areas where

the control lies with other components

As for teachers, they use their knowledge, their skills, their

personal qualities and their professionalism to exert control

These can be seen through the nature and extent of their

preservice and inservice training; their competency to plan

and organize learning; the role they assume in the classroom:

whether it be facilitator, lecturer, co-learner Language

teachers also exercise control over students through the

effectiveness of their lesson preparation; their personal

qualities; the respect they draw from their colleagues and from

the community; their working conditions; their attitude

towards their job, emplyer, and profession; their access to

professional journals and their active participation in a

teachers’ organization (Ashworth, 1985: 71)

As far as syllabus and program are concerned, the

degree of control that teacher can exercise are the goals of

the program, the theoretical modal on which the syllabus is

based, the design of the syllabus, the linguistic and cultural

content, and the method and techniques used in the

classroom They should also take into account the degree

of emphasis placed on each of the four skills, the

availability of materials, the length of the program, the size

of the class, and the range of the ability levels and ages

within the class (Ashworth, 1985: 72)

It can be said that the three components that make up

CL are (i) the knowledge that students need to know about

the various communities around, (ii) the co-operatve

attitude of students in their learning process which can be

seen through communicative interaction, and (iii) the

empathy that students need to be developed in terms of

Humanism The classroom itself is considered as a miniature society a small community indeed, where

students are seen as citizens of that society

2 Results of the Experimental Study

The main focus of the experimental study was on the distribution of unit acts across the individual student In general, the results collected from the observed classes suggested a very positive prospect for a CL trend The unit acts achieved through real-life, co-operative task types

such as Interviewing, Art-based tasks, Relaxation-based tasks, Student-community contact were much higher than those of pedagogic and non-co-operative task types (Topic discussion, Individual presentation, Realia-based tasks)

The results also proved that small groups and closed tasks produced more meaningful negotiation work than large groups and open tasks This was also true for the two-way tasks over one-way tasks, the planned over the unplanned, and the covergent over the divergent tasks A generalization that could be drawn from these experimental classes was that real-life and co-operative task types could elicit more language negotiation work, more feedback, more incoporation However, the results revealed that not only the characteristics of the task types could decide the success of the teaching but also, in terms of classroom management the grouping, the form of learning could partly contribute to the success of the lesson

Table 1 A taxonomy of the task-types for the study Co-operative

tasks

A1/C1

Co-operative tasks

A2/C2

Co-operative tasks

A3/C3

Co-operative presentation Student- community

contact

Multimedia-based task

Information referring Topic discussion Relaxation- based task Gap activities

Problem-solving Art-based task Information

rearranging Decision marking Realia-based task

Role play / Simulation Negotiating Survey Peer tutoring Discovering Questionnaire Consensus

reaching Planning Vocabulary- based talk Strip story Written work Opinion poll

Non -cooperative tasks

B1/D1

Non -cooperative tasks

B2/D2

Non -cooperative tasks

B3/D3

Individual presentation

Student-community contact

Multimedia-based task Information Topic

Relaxation-42 Dinh Thi Minh Hien

Individual

project Problem- solving Art-based task

Information

rearranging Decision marking Realia-based task

Story telling Idea exchange Interviewing

Vocabulary-based talk

Notes:

A1: Pedagogic cooperative shared tasks

C1: Real-life cooperative shared tasks

A2: Pedagogic cooperative experience tasks

C2: Real-life cooperative experience tasks

A3: Pedagogic cooperative guided tasks

C3: Real-life cooperative guided tasks

B1: Pedagogic non-cooperative independent tasks

D1: Real-life non-cooperative independent tasks

B2: Pedagogic non-cooperative experience tasks

D2: Real-life non-cooperative experience tasks

B3: Pedagogic non-cooperative guided tasks

D3: Real-life non-cooperative guided tasks

3 Evaluation

In Vietnam, what has FLT been viewed in terms of CL?

A sociological perspective can be considered as particularly

important here, firstly, for the analysis of global context of

language teaching and learning in modern time, and

secondly, for second or foreign language planning

The concept of “community” has something to do with

global context in FLT In other words, language itself must

be treated in a global context Additionally, since

languages are taught and learnt to establish contact and

communication, it is necessary to relate language to

community Moreover, learners must make contact with

the various communities everyday in their life; therefore,

knowing about the cultures and communities of other

countries is obviously helpful for them To achieve these

goals, language teaching can be looked upon as a bridge to

make a connection between classroom and society

Nowadays, globalization and other sciences have

played a major role in foreign language pedagogy,

influencing the quality of language programs in language

teaching It is believed that language teachers as well as

educational policy makers have become aware of this and

have boldly moved into the global science area These

developments are still relatively new in Vietnam To some

extent CL, which is based on the foundation of

globalization and sociolinguistics, meets the needs for the

development of the society And this is why CL becomes

an urgent need in education in Vietnam

4 Suggestions

In terms of CL, interaction plays an important role in FLT Semantically, messages learners receive via interaction are the product of negotiation, of give-and-take

as they attempt to communicate (Brown, 1994; Richard-Amato, 1996) Results from the experimental study proves that students in a CL classroom interact more than in a conventional classroom All the task types in the pedagogic and real-life cooperative categories can be used for CL (A1, A2, A3, C1, C2 and C3) In addition, the following learning tasks might be of great significance if used in EFL classes in terms of CL

At the elementary level: Everyday problems (Klippel, 1987), Volunteers, Realia (Ashworth, 1989)

At the intermediate level: What would happen if ? Ageless, Qualities, What is being advertised, Futures, Consequences, Alternatives (Klippel, 1987), Telephone Friendships, The Local Business Community (Strevens, 1987), Survey (Ashworth, 1989)

At the advanced level: Drama, Projects (Brown, 1994), PMI, Viewpoints (Klippel, 1987), Local Communities (Ashworth, 1985), Local Communities (Ashworth, 1985), Open-ended Scenarios, World Citizen Description

(Shoemaker, 1989)

At all levels: Brainstorming (Brown, 1994), Guarantees, Personalities, Lifestyle, Aims in Life (Klippel, 1987), National Cultural Agencies (Strevens, 1987), Field Trips, Establish Public Relations, Guess Speaker, That Was the Year That Was, Student-community Contact (Ashworth, 1989), Let’s Go Shopping (Shoemaker, 1989)

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Prerequisite for Communication Foreign Language Annuals 22 3

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(The Board of Editors received the paper on 17/02/2014, its review was completed on 21/03/2014)