In Chapter 1, it was pointed out that all normal children, given a normal upbringing, are successful in the acquisition of their first language. This contrasts with our experience of second language learners, who vary greatly in their abilities to acquire their second language.
Many of us believe that learners have certain characteristics which lead to more or less successful language learning. Such beliefs are usually based on anecdotal evidence, that is, on individual people we have known. For example, many teachers are convinced that extroverted learners who interact without inhibition in their second language and find many opportunities to practise language skills will be the most successful learners. In addition to personality characteristics, other factors generally considered to be relevant to language learning are intelligence, aptitude, motivation, and attitudes. Another important factor, as our previous discussion of the critical period hypothesis for first language acquisition has suggested, is the age at which learning begins.
In this chapter, we will see whether anecdotal evidence is supported by research findings. To what extent can we predict differences in the success of second language acquisition in two individuals if we have information about their personalities, their general and specific intellectual abilities, their motivation, or their age?

Activity
Characteristics of the good 'language learner'
It seems that some people have a much easier time of learning languages than others. Rate of development varies widely among first language learners. Some children can string together five-, six-, and seven-word sentences at the same time that other children are just beginning to label items in their immediate environment. Nevertheless, all normal children eventually master their first language.
All of the characteristics listed above can be classified into five main categories: motivation, aptitude, personality, intelligence, and learning style. However, many of the characteristics cannot be assigned exclusively to one category. For example, the characteristic `is willing to make mistakes' can be considered a personality and/or a motivational factor if the learner is willing to make mistakes in order to get the message across.

Research on learner characteristics
Perhaps the best way to begin our discussion is to describe how research on the influence of learner characteristics on second language learning has been carried out. When researchers are interested in finding out whether an individual factor such as motivation affects second language learning, they usually select a group of learners and give them a questionnaire to measure the type and degree of motivation. The learners are then given a test to measure their second language proficiency. The test and the questionnaire are both scored and the researcher investigates whether a learner with a high score on the proficiency test is also more likely to have a high score on the motivation questionnaire. If this is the case, the researcher usually concludes that high levels of motivation are correlated with success in language learning. A similar procedure can be used to measure the effects of intelligence on second language learning through the use of I Q tests.
Although this procedure seems straightforward, there are several difficulties with it. The first problem is that it is not possible to directly observe and measure qualities such as aptitude, motivation, extroversion, or even intelligence. These are just labels for an entire range of behaviours and characteristics. Furthermore, because characteristics such as these are not independent, it will come as no surprise that different researchers have often used the same labels to describe different sets of behavioural traits.
For example, in motivation questionnaires, learners are often asked whether they willingly seek out opportunities to use their second language with native speakers and if so, how often they do this. The assumption behind such a question is that learners who report that they often seek out opportunities to interact with speakers of the second language are highly motivated to learn. Although this assumption seems reasonable, it is problematic because if a learner responds by saying `yes' to this question, it not only suggests that the learner is highly motivated, but also that the learner has more opportunities for language practice in informal contexts. Because it is usually impossible to separate these two factors (i.e. willingness to interact and opportunities to interact), many researchers have been seriously criticized for attempting to present these characteristics as independent.

In second language learning, it has been observed countless times that in the same classroom setting, some students progress rapidly through the initial stages of a new language while others struggle along making very slow progress. Some learners never achieve native-like command of a second language. Are there personal characteristics that make one learner more successful than the other, and if so, what are they?
The following is a list of some of the characteristics commonly thought to contribute to successful language learning. In your experience-as a second language learner and as a teacher-which characteristics seem to you most likely to be associated with success in second language acquisition in the classroom? Which ones would you be less inclined to expect in a successful learner?
In each case rate the characteristic as follows:
1 = Very important
2 = Quite important
3 = Important
4 = Not very important
5 = Not at all important.
A good language learner:
a is a willing and accurate guesser 1 2 3 4 5
b tries to get a message across even if specific
language knowledge is lacking 1 2 3 4 5
c is willing to make mistakes 1 2 3 4 5
d constantly looks for patterns in the language 1 2 3 4 5
e practises as often as possible 1 2 3 4 5
f analyses his or her own speech and the speech of
others 1 2 3 4 5
g attends to whether his or her performance
meets the standards he or she has learned 1 2 3 4 5
h enjoys grammar exercises 1 2 3 4 5
i begins learning in childhood 1 2 3 4 5
j has an above-average IQ 1 2 3 4 5
k has good academic skills 1 2 3 4 5
l has a good self-image and lots of confidence 1 2 3 4 5

All of the characteristics listed above can be classified into five main categories: motivation, aptitude, personality, intelligence, and learning style. However, many of the characteristics cannot be assigned exclusively to one category. For example, the characteristic `is willing to make mistakes' can be considered a personality and/or a motivational factor if the learner is willing to make mistakes in order to get the message across.

Research on learner characteristics
Perhaps the best way to begin our discussion is to describe how research on the influence of learner characteristics on second language learning has been carried out. When researchers are interested in finding out whether an individual factor such as motivation affects second language learning, they usually select a group of learners and give them a questionnaire to measure the type and degree of motivation. The learners are then given a test to measure their second language proficiency. The test and the questionnaire are both scored and the researcher investigates whether a learner with a high score on the proficiency test is also more likely to have a high score on the motivation questionnaire. If this is the case, the researcher usually concludes that high levels of motivation are correlated with success in language learning. A similar procedure can be used to measure the effects of intelligence on second language learning through the use of I Q tests.
Although this procedure seems straightforward, there are several difficulties with it. The first problem is that it is not possible to directly observe and measure qualities such as aptitude, motivation, extroversion, or even intelligence. These are just labels for an entire range of behaviours and characteristics. Furthermore, because characteristics such as these are not independent, it will come as no surprise that different researchers have often used the same labels to describe different sets of behavioural traits.
For example, in motivation questionnaires, learners are often asked whether they willingly seek out opportunities to use their second language with native speakers and if so, how often they do this. The assumption behind such a question is that learners who report that they often seek out opportunities to interact with speakers of the second language are highly motivated to learn. Although this assumption seems reasonable, it is problematic because if a learner responds by saying `yes' to this question, it not only suggests that the learner is highly motivated, but also that the learner has more opportunities for language practice in informal contexts. Because it is usually impossible to separate these two factors (i.e. willingness to interact and opportunities to interact), many researchers have been seriously criticized for attempting to present these characteristics as independent.

Another factor which makes it difficult to reach conclusions about relationships between individual learner characteristics and second language learning is how language proficiency is defined and measured. To illustrate this point let us refer once again to the personal characteristic of motivation. In the second language learning literature, it is not uncommon to find that while some studies report that learners with a higher level of motivation are more successful language learners than those with lower motivation, other studies report that highly motivated learners do not perform any better on a proficiency test than learners with much less motivation to learn the second language. One explanation which has been offered for these conflicting findings is that the language proficiency tests used in these studies do not measure the same kind of knowledge. That is, highly motivated learners are found to be more successful in some studies because the proficiency tests measure oral communication skills. In other studies, however, highly motivated learners are not found to be more successful because the tests are primarily measures of grammatical knowledge. Results such as these imply that motivation to learn a second language may be more related to particular aspects of language proficiency than others.

Finally, there is the problem of interpreting the correlation of two factors as being due to a causal relationship between them. That is, the fact that two
things tend to occur together does not necessarily mean that one caused the other. Research on motivation is perhaps the best context in which to illustrate this. Learners who are successful may indeed be highly motivated. But can we conclude that they became successful because of their motivation? Is it not also plausible that their success heightened their motivation? In fact, it is very difficult to show with certainty that the correlations that are found between learner characteristics and success in second language acquisition are indicative of a one-way causal relationship. It seems more likely that, at least for some of these individual differences, the characteristic may contribute to success, but success also contributes to the enhancement of characteristics such as motivation, risk-taking behaviour, or even performance on tests which measure aptitude for language learning. As we will see, research on individual differences often permits multiple interpretations. In the sections below, we will look at `what people say' about individual differences and `what the research shows' to support or refute these opinions.
Intelligence
A link between intelligence and second language learning has been reported by several researchers. Over the years, many studies using a variety of I Q tests and different methods of assessing language learning have found that intelligence levels were a good means of predicting how successful a learner would be at language learning. Furthermore, some recent studies have shown that intelligence may be more strongly related to certain kinds of second language abilities than others. For example, in a study with French immersion children in Canada, it was found that while intelligence was related to the development of French second language reading, grammar, and vocabulary, it was unrelated to oral productive skills (Genesee 1976). Similar findings have been reported in other studies where intelligence was highly related to performance on reading, dictation, and writing tasks, but not on listening comprehension and free oral production tasks. These findings suggest that intelligence is more related to those second language skills which are used in the formal study of a language (i.e. reading, language analysis, writing, and vocabulary study), but that intelligence is much less likely to influence the way in which oral communication skills are developed. Therefore, intelligence seems to be a strong factor when it comes to learning second languages in classrooms, particularly if the instruction is formal. When the classroom instruction is less formal, however (i.e. more communicative), so-called `intelligence' (as measured by I Q tests) may play a less important role.

Aptitude
There is evidence in the research literature that some individuals have an exceptional `aptitude' for language learning. Lorraine Obler (1989) reports that a man, whom she calls CJ, has such a specialized ability. CJ is a native speaker of English who grew up in an English home. His first true experience with a second language came at the age of 15 with formal instruction in French. CJ also studied German, Spanish, and Latin while in high school. At age 20, he made a brief visit to Germany. CJ reported that just hearing German spoken for a short time was enough for him to `recover' the German he had learned in school. Later, CJ worked in Morocco where he reported learning Moroccan Arabic through both formal instruction and informal immersion. He also spent some time in Spain and Italy, where he apparently `picked up' both Spanish and Italian in a `matter of weeks'. A remarkable talent indeed! There may be few learners like CJ, but research does show that human beings exhibit a wide range of aptitude for learning a second language.

The `aptitude' factor has been investigated most intensively by researchers who are interested in developing tests which can predict how successful a language learner will be. The most widely used aptitude tests are the Modern Language Aptitude Test (??T LAT) and the Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery. Both tests measure characteristics such as: (1) the ability to identify and memorize new sounds; (2) the ability to understand how words function grammatically in sentences; (3) the ability to figure out grammatical rules from language samples; and (4) memory for new words. It is thought that learners will be more successful if they have these abilities. Although there have been a number of studies examining this factor, the results are in no way conclusive. One of the most serious problems is that it is not clear what the abilities are that constitute aptitude. That is, many of the behaviours associated with it may just as easily be associated with another learner characteristic such as general intelligence or personality. Furthermore, the abilities which are associated with success in an academic course may not be as closely linked to the success some people have in `picking up' a language.
Personality
A number of personality characteristics have been proposed as likely to affect second language learning, but it has not been easy to demonstrate their effects in empirical studies. As with other research investigating the effects of individual characteristics on second language learning, different studies measuring a similar personality trait produce different results. For example, it is often argued that an extroverted person is well-suited to language learning. However, research does not always support this conclusion. Although some studies have found that success in language learning is highly related to learners' scores on some characteristics often associated with extroversion such as assertiveness and adventurousness, others have found that successful language learners do not get high scores on measures of extroversion.

Another aspect of personality which has been studied is inhibition. It has been suggested that inhibition discourages risk-taking which is necessary for progress in language learning. This is often considered to be a particular problem for adolescents, who are more self conscious than younger learners. In a series of studies, Alexander Guiora and his colleagues have found support for the claim that inhibition is a negative force in language learning. One study involved an analysis of the effects of small doses of alcohol on pronunciation (Guiora et al.1972). It was found that subjects who received small doses of alcohol did better on pronunciation tests than those who did not drink any alcohol. While results such as these are interesting, as well as amusing, they are not convincing, since experiments such as these are far removed from the reality of the classroom situation. We may also note, in passing, that when larger doses of alcohol were administered, pronunciation rapidly deteriorated!

Several other personality characteristics such as self esteem, empathy, dominance, talkativeness, and responsiveness, have also been studied. However, in general, the available research does not show a clearly defined relationship between personality and second language acquisition. And, as indicated earlier, the major difficulty in investigating personality characteristics is that of identification and measurement. Another explanation which has been offered for the mixed findings of personality studies is that personality variables may be a major factor only in the acquisition of communicative competence. The confused picture of the research on personality factors is due in part to the fact that comparisons are made between studies that measure communicative ability and studies that measure grammatical accuracy or knowledge of linguistic rules. Personality variables seem to be consistently related to the former, but not to the latter. Despite the inconclusive results and the problems involved in carrying out research in the area of personality characteristics, many researchers believe that personality will be shown to have an important influence on success in language learning. This relationship is a complex one, however, in that it is probably not personality alone, but the way in which it combines with other factors that contributes to second language learning.
Motivation and attitudes
There has been a great deal of research on the role of attitudes and motivation in second language learning. The overall findings show that positive attitudes and motivation are related to success in second language learning (Gardner 1985). Unfortunately, the research cannot indicate precisely how motivation affects learning. That is, we do not know whether it is the motivation that produces successful learning or successful learning that enhances motivation. Are learners more highly motivated because they are successful, or are they successful because they are highly motivated? (Skehan 1989)

Motivation in second language learning is a complex phenomenon which can be defined in terms of two factors: learners' communicative needs, and their attitudes towards the second language community. If learners need to speak the second language in a wide range of social situations or to fulfil professional ambitions, they will perceive the communicative value of the second language and will therefore be motivated to acquire proficiency in it. Likewise, if learners have favourable attitudes towards the speakers of the language, they will desire more contact with them. On the other hand, we should keep in mind that an individual's identity is closely linked with the way he or she speaks. It follows that when speaking a new language, one is adopting some of the identity markers of another cultural group. Depending on the learner's attitudes, learning a second language can be a source of enrichment or a source of resentment. If the speaker's only reason for learning the second language is external pressure, internal motivation may be minimal and general attitudes towards learning may be negative.
One factor which often affects motivation is the social dynamic or power relationship between the languages. That is, members of a minority group may have different attitudes and motivation when learning the language of a majority group than those of majority group members learning a minority language. Even though it is impossible to predict the exact effect of such societal factors on second language learning, the fact that languages exist in social contexts cannot be overlooked when we seek to understand the variables which affect success in learning. Even children are sensitive to social dynamics and power relationships.

Learning styles
An area of research which has received a lot of attention in many areas of education is the issue of learning styles. This research suggests that different learners approach a task with a different set of skills and preferred strategies. We have all heard people say that they cannot learn something until they have seen it. Such learners would fall into the group called `visual' learners. Other people, who may be called `aural' learners, seem to need only to hear something once or twice before they know it. Some learners feel compelled to memorize and will practise and practise until they have committed new information to memory, before they feel comfortable that they have a grasp of it. For still others, there is a need to add physical action to the learning process. It is not enough to see, hear, or practise for these learners. They need to live the new knowledge in ways that involve them more completely.
Of course, all of us learn in all these ways. We can all benefit from a variety of learning experiences. However, there is clearly some truth to the intuition that certain ways of approaching a task are more successful for one person than for another, and that when learners are given some freedom to choose their preferred way of learning, they will do better than those who find themselves forced to learn in environments where a learning style which does not suit them is imposed as the only way to learn.
Apart from Reid ( 1987), there is very little research on the interaction between different learning styles and success in second language acquisition. Nevertheless, the research which has been carried out, on SLA and in other fields, tells us that when learners express a preference for seeing something written, or want to memorize material which we feel should be learned in a less formal way, we should not assume that their ways of working are wrong. Instead, we should encourage them to use all means available to them as they work to learn another language (Oxford 1990).
At a minimum, research on learning styles should make us sceptical of claims that a particular teaching method or textbook will suit the needs of all learners.

Age of acquisition
We now turn to a learner characteristic of a different type: age. This is a characteristic which is easier to define and measure than personality, aptitude, or motivation. Nevertheless, the relationship between a learner's age and his or her potential for success in second language acquisition is the subject of much lively debate.
It has been widely observed that children from immigrant families eventually speak the language of their new community with native-like fluency.
Their parents rarely achieve such high levels of mastery of the new language. Adult second language learners may become very capable of communicating successfully in the language, but there will always be differences of accent, word choice, or grammatical features which set them apart from native speakers or from speakers who began learning the language while they were very young.

One explanation for this difference is that, as in first language acquisition, there is a critical period for second language acquisition. As discussed in Chapter 2, the Critical Period Hypothesis suggests that there is a time in human development when the brain is predisposed for success in language learning. Developmental changes in the brain, it is argued, change the nature of second language acquisition. According to this view, language learning which occurs after the end of the critical period may not be based on the innate structures believed to contribute to first language acquisition or second language acquisition in early childhood. Rather, older learners depend on more general learning abilities-the same ones they might use to learn other kinds of skills or information. It is argued that these general learning abilities are not as successful for language learning as the more specific, innate capacities which are available to the young child. It is most often claimed that the critical period ends somewhere around puberty, and that adolescents and adults are no longer able to call upon the innate language acquisition capacities which work so well for young children.
Of course, as we saw in Chapter 2, it is difficult to compare children and adults as second language learners. One of the difficulties in making the comparison is that the conditions for language learning are often very different. Younger learners in informal language learning environments usually have more time to devote to learning language. They often have more opportunities to hear and use the language in environments where they dc not experience strong pressure to speak fluently and accurately from the very beginning. Furthermore, their early imperfect efforts are often praised or, at least, accepted. On the other hand, older learners are often in situations which demand much more complex language and the expression of much more complicated ideas. Adults are often embarrassed by their lack of mastery of the language and they may develop a sense of inadequacy after experiences of frustration in trying to say exactly what they mean.

The critical period hypothesis has been challenged in recent years from several different points of view. Some studies of the second language development of older and younger learners who are learning in similar circumstances have shown that, at least in the early stages of second language development, older learners are more efficient than younger learners. In educational research, it has been reported that learners who began learning a second language at the primary school level did not fare better in the long run than those who began in early adolescence. Furthermore, there are countless anecdotes about older learners (adolescents and adults) who have reached high levels of proficiency in a second language. In neurological research, it has not been demonstrated that the hypothesized changes take place in the brain at puberty. Much research seems rather to suggest that the brains of very young infants already have some areas which are specialized for processing language. In the following pages, we will review some of the important recent studies designed to investigate the critical period hypothesis as it relates to second language learning.

C P H : More than just accent?
Most studies which have investigated the relationship between age of acquisition and second language development have focused on learners' phonological (pronunciation) achievement. In general, these studies have concluded that older learners almost inevitably have a noticeable `foreign accent'. But what of other linguistic features? Is syntax (word order, overall sentence structure) as dependent on age of acquisition as phonological development? Do older learners ever achieve native-like mastery of syntax? What about morphology (for example, grammatical endings which mark such things as verb tense or the number and gender of nouns)? One study that attempted to answer these questions is that of Mark Patkowski (1980).

Mastery of the spoken language
Mark Patkowski studied the effect of age on the acquisition of features of a second language other than accent. He hypothesized that, even if accent were ignored, only those who had begun learning their second language before the age of 15 could ever achieve full, native-like mastery of that language. Patkowski examined the spoken English of 67 highly educated immigrants to the United States. They had started to learn English at various ages, but all had lived in the United States for more than five years. The spoken English of 15 native-born Americans from a similarly high level of education was also examined. Their speech served as a sort of baseline of what the second language learners might be trying to attain as the target language. Inclusion of the native speakers also provided evidence concerning the validity of the research procedures. A lengthy interview with each of the subjects in the study was tape recorded. Because Patkowski wanted to remove the possibility that the results would be affected by accent, he did not ask the raters to judge the tape-recorded interviews themselves. Instead, he transcribed five-minute samples from the interviews. These samples (from which any identifying or revealing information about immigration history had been removed) were rated by trained native-speaker judges. The judges were asked to place each speaker on a rating scale from 0, representing no knowledge of the language, and 5, representing a level of English expected from an educated native speaker.

The main question in Patkowski's research was: `Will there be a difference between learners who began to learn English before puberty and those who began learning English later?' However, in the light of some of the issues discussed above, he also compared learners on the basis of other characteristics and experiences which some people have suggested might be as good as age in predicting or explaining a learner's eventual success in mastering a second language. For example, he looked at the relationship between eventual mastery and the total amount of time a speaker had been in the United States as well as the amount of formal E s L instruction the learner had had. The findings were quite dramatic. Thirty-two out of 33 subjects who had begun learning English before the age of fifteen scored at the 4+ or the 5 level. The homogeneity of the pre-puberty learners seemed to suggest that, for this group, success in learning a second language was almost inevitable (see Figure 3.1). On the other hand, there was much more variety in the levels achieved by the post-puberty group. The majority of the post-puberty learners centred around the 3+ level, but there was a distribution of levels (see Figure 3.1). This variety made the performance of this group look more like the sort of performance range one would expect if one were measuring success in learning almost any kind of skill or knowledge.
Patkowski's first question, `Will there be a difference between learners who began to learn English before puberty and those who began learning English later?, was answered with a very resounding `yes'. When he examined the other factors which might be thought to affect success in second language acquisition, the picture was much less clear. There was, naturally, some relationship between these other factors and learning success. However, it often turned out that age was so closely related to the other factors that it was not really possible to separate them completely. For example, length of residence in the United States sometimes seemed to be a fairly good predictor. However, while it was true that a person who had lived in the country for fifteen years might speak better than one who had been there for only ten years, it was often the case that the one with longer residence had also arrived at an earlier age. However, a person who had arrived in the United States at the age of eighteen and had lived there for twenty years did not score significantly better than someone who had arrived at the age of eighteen but had only lived there for ten years. Similarly, amount of instruction, when separated from age, did not predict success to the extent that age of immigration did.
Thus, Patkowski found that age of acquisition is a very important factor in setting limits on the development of native-like mastery of a second language and that this limitation does not apply only to accent. These results gave added support to the critical period hypothesis for second language acquisition.

Figure 3. I: Bar charts showing the language levels ofpre- and post puberty learners ofEnglish (Patkowski 1980).
Experience and research have shown that native-like mastery of the spoken language is difficult to attain by older learners. Surprisingly, even the ability to distinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in a second language appears to be affected by the age factor, as we will see in the next study by Newport and Johnson.
Intuitions of grammaticality
Jacqueline Johnson and Elissa Newport conducted a study of 46 Chinese and Korean speakers who had begun to learn English at different ages. All subjects were students or faculty at an American university and all had been in the United States for at least three years. The study also included 23 native speakers of English (Johnson and Newport 1989).

The participants in the study were given a grammaticality judgement task which tested twelve rules of English morphology and syntax (verb tense, noun pluralization, verb agreement, word order, question formation, use of articles, and use of pronouns). They heard sentences on a tape and had to indicate whether or not each sentence was correct. Half of the sentences were grammatical, half were not.
When they scored the tests, Johnson and Newport found that age of arrival was a significant predictor of success on the test. When they grouped the learners in the same way as Patkowski, comparing those who began their intensive exposure to English between the ages of three and fifteen with those who arrived in the United States between the ages of seventeen and 39, once again they found that there was a strong relationship between an early start to language learning and performance in the second language. Johnson and Newport noted that before the age of fifteen, and especially before the age of ten, there are few individual differences in second language ability. Older learners will not have native-like language skills and are more likely to differ greatly from one another in ultimate attainment.
This study, then, further supports the hypothesis that there is a critical period for attaining full native-like mastery of a second language. Nevertheless, there is some research which suggests that older learners may have an advantage, at least in the early stages of second language learning.
Is younger really better?
In 1978, Catherine Snow and Marian Hoefnagel-Höhle published an article based on a research project they had carried out in Holland. They had studied the progress of a group of English speakers who were learning Dutch as a second language. What made their research especially valuable was that the learners they were following included children as young as three years old as well as adolescents and adults. Furthermore, a large number of different types of language use and language knowledge were measured and analysed.

Pronunciation was tested by having learners pronounce 80 Dutch words twice: the first time immediately after hearing a native speaker say the word; the second time, a few minutes later, they were asked to say the word represented in a picture, without a model to imitate. Tape recordings of the learners were rated by a native speaker of Dutch on a six-point scale. In an auditory discrimination test, learners saw pictures of four objects. In each group of four there were two whose names were minimal pairs, that is, alike except for one sound (an example in English would be 'shi'' and 'sheep'). Learners heard one of the words and were asked to indicate which picture was named by the word they heard.

Morphology was tested using a procedure which required learners to complete sentences by adding the correct grammatical markers to words which were supplied by the researchers. Again, to take an example from English, learners were asked to complete sentences such as 'Here is one boy. Now there are two of them. There are two _______.'
,
The sentence repetition task required learners to repeat 37 sentences of increasing length and grammatical complexity.
For sentence translation, learners were given 60 sentences to translate from English to Dutch. A point was given for each grammatical structure which was rendered into the correct Dutch equivalent.
In the sentence judgement task, learners were to judge which of two sentences was better. The same content was expressed in both sentences, but one sentence was grammatically correct while the other contained errors.
In the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, learners saw four pictures and heard one isolated word. Their task was to indicate which picture corresponds to the word spoken by the tester.

For the story comprehension task, learners heard a story in Dutch and were then asked to retell the story in English or Dutch (according to their preference).
Finally, the storytelling task required learners to tell a story which corresponded to a set of pictures they were given. Rate of delivery of speech mattered more than the expression of content or formal accuracy. The learners were divided into several age groups, but for our discussion we will divide them into just three groups: children (aged 3 to 10), adolescents ( 12 to 15 years), and adults ( 18 to 60 years). The children and adolescents all attended Dutch schools. Some of the adults worked in Dutch work environments, but most of their Dutch colleagues spoke English well. Other adults were parents who did not work outside their homes and thus had somewhat less contact with Dutch than most of the other subjects.
The learners were tested three times, at four- to five-month intervals. They were first tested within six months of their arrival in Holland and within six weeks of their starting school or work in a Dutch language environment.
Activity
Which group do you think did best on the first test (that is, who learned fastest)? Which group do you think was best by the end of the year? Do you think some groups would do better on certain tasks than others? For example, who do you think would do best on the pronunciation tasks, and who would do best on the tasks requiring more metalinguistic awareness? Compare your predictions with the results on the different tasks which are presented in Table 3.1. An 'X' indicates that the group was best on this test at the beginning of the year (an indication of the rate of learning), and a 'Y' indicates the group that did best at the end of the year (and indication of eventual attainment).

Table 3. I: Comparison of language learning at different ages
TaskChildAdolescentAdult
PronunciationYYX
Auditory discrimination XY
Morphology XY
Sentence repetition XY
Sentence translation*XY
Sentence judgement*XY
Peabody picture vocabulary test XY
Story comprehensionYX
StorytellingYX
* These tests were too difficult for child learners.

In the Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle study, the adolescents were by far the most successful learners. They were ahead of everyone on all but one of the tests (pronunciation) on the first test session. That is, within the first few months the adolescents had already made the most progress in learning Dutch. As the table indicates, it was the adults who were better than the children and adolescents on the pronunciation test at the first test session. Surprisingly, it was also the adults, not the children, whose scores were second best on the other tests at the first test session. In other words, adolescents an adults learned faster than children in the first few months of exposure to Dutch.

By the end of the year, however, the children were rapidly catching up or had, in fact, surpassed the adults on several measures (for example, pronunciation, story comprehension, and storytelling). Nevertheless, it was the adolescents who retained the highest levels of performance overall.
Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle concluded that their results provide evidence that there is no critical period for language acquisition. However, their results can be interpreted in different ways as well:
1 Some of the tasks, for example, sentence judgement or translation, were too hard for young learners. They were simply beyond the children's cognitive capacities.
2 While adults and adolescents learn faster in the early stages of second language development, young children eventually catch up and even surpass them if their exposure to the language takes place in contexts where they are surrounded by the language on a daily basis. In other words, adults and adolescents learn at a faster rate, while children surpass adults and adolescents in eventual attainment.
3 Adults and adolescents can make considerable and rapid progress towards mastery of a second language in contexts where they can make use of the language on a daily basis in social, personal, professional, or academic interaction.
At what age should second language instruction begin?
After reading the critical period studies, it is tempting to say, 'I didn't start studying a second language in childhood, so what's the point of trying?' or, 'If second language teaching programs are to succeed, they had better begin with very young children'. However, we know that even if native-like mastery of a second language is usually not possible for learners who begin learning later in life, experience and research both show that older learners are able to attain high levels of proficiency in their second language. Furthermore, it is essential to think carefully about the goals of an instructional program and the context in which it occurs before we jump to conclusions about the necessity-or even the desirability-of the earliest possible start.
The role of the critical period in second language acquisition is still a much debated topic. For every researcher who holds that there are maturational constraints on language acquisition, there is another who considers that the age factor cannot be separated from factors such as motivation, social identity, and the conditions for learning. They argue that older learners may well speak with an accent because they want to continue being identified with their first language cultural group. And adults rarely get access to the same quantity and quality of language input that children receive in play settings.

Many people conclude on the basis of studies such as those by Patkowski, and Newport and Johnson that it is better to begin second language instruction as early as possible. Yet it is very important to bear in mind the context of these studies. They deal with the highest possible level of second language skills, the level at which a second language speaker is indistinguishable from a native speaker. But achieving a native-like mastery of the second language is not a goal for all second language learning, in all contexts. When the objective of second language learning is native-like mastery of the target language, it is usually desirable for the learner to be completely surrounded by the language as early as possible. However, in the case of children from minority language backgrounds or homes where language, literacy, and education are not well-developed, early intensive exposure to the second language may entail the loss or incomplete development of the child's first language. This leads to so-called subtractive bilingualism, where one language is lost before another is fully developed. Subtractive bilingualism may, in turn, lead to academic and personal problems. For these children, programs promoting the development of their first language at home and at school can help to prevent some of these problems. Such programs allow children to continue to use their stronger first language while they learn the second language. This encouragement of the first language can have positive effects on the children's self esteem, on their relationships with their parents, on their early cognitive development, and somewhat paradoxically, on their eventual mastery of the second language.
When the goal is basic communicative ability for all students in a school setting, and when it is assumed that the child's native language will remain the primary language, it may be more efficient to begin second language teaching later. In research on school learners receiving a few hours of instruction per week, learners who start later (for example, at age 10,11, or 12) catch up very quickly with those who began earlier. Any school program should be based on realistic estimates of how long it takes to learn a second language. One or two hours a week - even for seven or eight years - will not produce very advanced second language speakers.
The learner's age is one of the characteristics which determine the way in which an individual approaches second language learning. But the opportunities for learning (both inside and outside the classroom), the motivation to learn, and individual differences in aptitude for language learning are also important determining factors in both rate of learning and eventual success in learning.

Summary
In this chapter, we have looked at the ways in which intelligence, aptitude, personality and motivational characteristics, learning styles, and age have been found to influence second language learning. We have learned that the study of individual learner variables is not easy and that the results of research are not entirely satisfactory. This is partly because of the lack of clear definitions and methods for measuring the individual characteristics. It is also due to the fact that these learner characteristics are not independent of one another: learner variables interact in complex ways. So far, researchers know very little about the nature of these complex interactions. Furthermore, in a classroom, a sensitive teacher, who takes learners' individual personalities and learning styles into account, can create a learning environment in which virtually all learners can be successful in learning a second language. Therefore, it remains difficult to make precise predictions about how a particular individual's characteristics influence his or her success as a language learner.

Sources and suggestions for further reading
General discussion of individual differences
Skehan, P. 1989. Individual Differences in Second Language Learning. London: Edward Arnold.
Intelligence
Genesee, F. 1976. `The role of intelligence in second language learning.' Language Learning 26: 267-80.

Aptitude
Wesche, M.B. 1981. `Language aptitude measures in streaming, matching students with methods, and diagnosis of learning problems' in K. Diller (ed.): Individual Differences and Universals in Language Learning Aptitude. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. pp.119-39.

The case of CJ
Obler, L.1989. `Exceptional second language learners' in S. Gass, C. Madden, D. Preston, and L. Selinker (eds.): Variation in Second Language Acquisition, Vol. IL. Psycholinguistic Issues. Clevedon, UK/Philadelphia, Pa.: Multilingual Matters. pp.141-59.

Motivation and attitudes
Gardner, R.1985. Social Psychology and Second Language Learning.. The Role of Attitudes and Motivation. London: Edward Arnold.

Inhibition and second language learning
Guiora, A., B. Beit-Hallahmi, R. Brannon, C. Dull, and T. Scovel.1972. `
The effects of experimentally induced changes in ego states on pronunciation ability in a second language: An exploratory study.' Comprehensive Psychiatry 13:139-50.

Learning styles and learner strategies
Reid, J. 1987. `The learning style preferences of ESL students.' TESOL Quarterly 21 / 1: 87-111.
Oxford, R.1990. Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know. New York: Newbury House.

Age of acquisition
Johnson, J., and E. Newport. 1989. `Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a Second Language.' Cognitive Psychology 21: 60-99.

Brown,H.D.: Learner Variables I: Teaching Across Age Levels
On occasion people who are quite unaware of the language teaching field will walk into my office at the university and ask me something like, "Since English is my native language, I won't have any problem teaching it will I?" Or they might ask, on the eve of their departure to Indonesia (without the slightest clue of who their future students will be), "Can you recommend a good textbook for my students?" Other naive inquirers who have just a little exposure to the vastness and complexity of the field still might assert, "I would like to learn how to teach ESL. Can you recommend a good workshop?" Such hopes are fueled by occasional advertisements in local newspapers that promise you lifelong employment as an English teacher (in exotic places across the seas) if only you'll attend someone's weekend seminar (or two) and, of course, cough up a fairly hefty enrollment fee.

You have already begun to get a taste of the array of questions and issues and approaches and techniques that must be included in your training as a language teacher-a complexity that can hardly be effectively covered in a weekend workshop. Part of this complexity is brought on by the multiplicity of contexts in which languages, and English more so than any other language, are learned and taught. Even if you could somehow pack up a suitcase full of the most current teaching resources, you would still have to face the question of who your learners are, where they are learning, and why they, are learning.
This chapter begins to deal with contextual considerations in language teaching. In this chapter, context is addressed in terms of the learner variable of age. Chapter 7 deals with the learner variable of language proficiency (beginning, intermediate, and advanced). And Chapter 8 grapples with several complex variables introduced by sociopolitical contexts of teaching (country, societal expectations, cultural factors, political constraints, the status of English), by the institution one is teaching in (school, university, language school, adult education, vocational/workplace courses), and by the implied purposes for learning English (academic, technical, social, cultural immersion, enrichment, survival). Each of these considerations is essential to incorporate into your choices of techniques, lesson organization, and supporting materials.
Teaching Children
Popular tradition would have you believe that children are effortless second language learners and far superior to adults in their eventual success. On both counts, some qualifications are in order. First of all, children's widespread success in acquiring second languages belies a tremendous subconscious effort devoted to the task. As you have discovered in other reading (see PLLT, Chapters 2 and 3, for example) children exercise a good deal of both cognitive and affective effort in order to internalize both native and second languages. The difference between children and adults (that is, persons beyond the age of puberty) lies primarily in the contrast between the child's spontaneous, peripheral attention to language forms and the adult's overt, focal awareness and attention to those forms. Therefore, the popular notion about children holds only if "effort" refers, rather narrowly, to focal attention (sometimes thought of as "conscious" attention-see Chapter 11 of PLLT) to language forms.

Nor are adults necessarily less successful in their efforts. Studies have shown that adults, in fact, can be superior in a number of aspects of acquisition. They can learn and retain a larger vocabulary. They can utilize various deductive and abstract processes to shortcut the learning of grammatical and other linguistic concepts. And, in classroom learning, their superior intellect usually helps them to learn faster than a child. So, while children, with their fluency and naturalness, are often the envy of adults struggling with second languages, children in classrooms may have some difficulties learning a second language.
Third, the popular claim fails to differentiate very young children from pre-pubescent children and the whole range of ages in between. There are actually many instances of older (school-age) children manifesting significant difficulty in acquiring a second language for a multitude of reasons. Ranking high on that list of reasons are a number of complex personal, social, cultural, and political factors at play in elementary school teaching of second languages.
Teaching ESL to school-age children, therefore, is not merely a matter of setting them loose on a plethora of authentic language tasks in the classroom. To successfully teach children a second language requires specific skills and intuitions that differ from those that you would use for adult teaching. Five categories may help to give you some practical approaches to teaching children.
1. Intellectual development

An elementary school teacher once asked her students to take out a piece of paper and pencil and write something. A little boy raised his hand, "Teacher, I ain't got no pencil." The teacher, somewhat perturbed by his grammar, embarked on a barrage of corrective patterns: "I don't have a pencil. You don't have a pencil. We don't have pencils." Confused and bewildered, the child responded, "Ain't nobody got no pencils?"
Since children (up to the age of about eleven) are still in an intellectual stage of what Piaget called concrete operations," you need to remember their limitations. Rules, explanations, and other even slightly abstract talk about language must be approached with extreme caution. Children are centered on the "here and now," on the functional purposes of language. They have little appreciation for our adult notions of "correctness," and they certainly cannot grasp the metalanguage we use to describe and explain linguistic concepts. Some rules of thumb for your classroom:
•Don't explain grammar using terms like "present progressive" or "relative clause."
•Rules that are stated in abstract terms ("To make a statement into a question, you add a 'do' or 'does'") should be avoided.
•Some grammatical concepts, especially at the upper levels of childhood, can be called to learners' attention by showing them certain patterns ("Notice the 'ing' at the end of the word.") and examples ("This is the way we say it when it's happening right now: 'I'm walking to the door.')
•Certain more difficult concepts or patterns require more repetition than adults need. For example, repeating certain patterns (without boring them) may be necessary to get the brain and the ear to cooperate. Unlike the scene with the little boy who had no pencil, children must understand the meaning and relevance of repetitions.
2. Attention span
One of the most salient differences between adults and children is attention span. First, it is important to understand what attention span means. Put children in front of a TV with a favorite cartoon show on and they will stay riveted to their seats for the duration. So, you cannot make a sweeping claim that children have short attention spans! The short attention spans come up only when you present stuff that to them is boring, useless, or too difficult. Since language lessons can at times be difficult for children, your job then is one of making them interesting, lively, and fun. How do you do that?
•Because children are focused on the immediate here and now, activities should be designed to capture their immediate interest.
•A lesson needs to have a variety of activities to keep interest and attention alive.
•A teacher needs to be animated, lively, and enthusiastic about the subject matter. Consider the classroom a stage in which you are the lead actor; your energy will be infectious to others. While you may think that you're overdoing it, children need this exaggeration to keep spirits buoyed and minds alert.
•A sense of humor will go a long way to keep children laughing and learning. Since children's humor is quite different from adults', remember to put yourself in their shoes.

•Children have a lot of natural curiosity. Make sure you tap into that curiosity whenever possible and you will thereby help to maintain attention and focus.
3. Sensory input
Children need to have all five senses stimulated. Your activities should strive to go well beyond the visual and auditory modes that we usually feel are sufficient for a classroom.
oPepper your lessons with physical activity, such as having students act out things (role play), play games, or do Total Physical Response activities.
oProjects and other hands-on activities will go a long way toward helping children to internalize language. Small group science projects, for example, are excellent ways to get them to learn words and structures and to practice meaningful language.
oSensory aids here and there will help children to internalize concepts. The smell of flowers, the touch of plants and fruits, the taste of foods, liberal doses of audio-visual aids like videos, pictures, tapes, music-all these are important elements in children's language teaching.
oRemember that your own nonverbal language is important as children will indeed attend very sensitively to your facial features, gestures, and touching.

4. Affective factors
A common myth is that children are relatively unaffected by the inhibitions that adults find to be such a block to learning. Not so! Children are often innovative in language forms but still have a great many inhibitions. They are extremely sensitive, especially to peers: What do others think of me? What will so-and-so think when I speak in English? Children are in many ways much more fragile than adults. Their egos are still being shaped, and therefore the slightest nuances of communication can be negatively interpreted. Teachers need to help them to overcome such potential barriers to learning.
oHelp your students to laugh with each other at various mistakes that they all make.
oBe patient and supportive, to build self-esteem, yet at the same time be firm in your expectations of students.
oElicit as much oral participation as possible from students, especially the quieter ones, to give them plenty of opportunities for trying things out.
5. Authentic, meaningful language

Children are focused on what this new language can actually be used for right here and now. They are less willing to put up with language that doesn't hold immediate rewards for them. Your classes can ill afford to have an overload of language that is neither authentic nor meaningful.
oChildren are good at sensing language that is not authentic; therefore, "canned" or stilted language will simply not be accepted.
oLanguage needs to be firmly context embedded. Story lines familiar situations and characters, real-life conversations, meaningful purposes in using language-these will establish a context within which language can be received and sent and thereby improve attention and retention. Context reduced language in abstract, isolated, unconnected sentences will be much less readily tolerated by children's minds.
oA whole language approach is essential. Don't break up language into too many bits and pieces or students won't see the relationship to the whole. And stress the interrelationships among the various skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing), otherwise they won't see important connections.
It takes a very special person to be able to teach children effectively. Along with all these guidelines, there is a certain intuition that an elementary school teacher develops with increasing months and years of experience. If you don t have the experience, you will, in due course of time. Meanwhile, you must begin somewhere, and these rules of thumb will help.
Teaching Adults
While many of the "rules" for teaching children can apply in some ways to teaching adults, the latter age group nevertheless poses some different, special considerations for the classroom teacher. Adults have superior cognitive abilities that can render them a bit more successful in certain classroom endeavors. Their need for sensory input can rely a little more on using their imagination ("imagine" smelling a rose vs. actually smelling a rose). gTheir level of shyness can be equal to or greater than children, but usually there is already a certain self-confidence that isn't as mature in children. And because of adults' cognitive abilities, they can at least occasionally deal with language that isn't embedded in a "here and now" context.
So, as you consider the five variables that apply to children, keep in mind specifically some suggestions and caveats.
(1) Adults are more readily able to handle abstract rules and concepts. However, beware! As you know, too much abstract generalization about usage and not enough real-live language use can be deadly for adults, too.
(2) Adults, too, have longer attention spans for material that may not be intrinsically interesting to them. But again, the rule of keeping your activities short and sweet still applies to adult-age teaching.

(3) Sensory input need not always be quite as varied with adults, but one of the secrets of lively adult classes is their appeal to multiple senses.
(4) Adults often bring a modicum of general self-confidence (global self-esteem) into a classroom; the fragility of egos may therefore not be quite as critical as those of children. However, we should never underestimate the emotional factors that may be attendant to adult second language learning.
(5) Adults, with their more developed abstract thinking ability, are better able to take a context-reduced segment of language and understand it. Authenticity and meaningfulness are of course still highly important, but elements of adult language teaching can take temporary departures for the sake of dissecting those elements and examining them,' as long as they are then readily returned to the original context.
Some implications for general classroom management (see Chapter 21 for a full treatment) can be drawn from what we know about differences between children and adults. Some management "do's" and "don'ts":
[1) Do remember that even though adults cannot express complex thinking in the new language, they are nevertheless intelligent adults with mature cognition and adult emotions. Show respect for those deeper thoughts and feelings that may be "trapped", for the moment by a low proficiency level.
(2) Don't treat adults in your class like children by:
a. calling them "kids"
b. using "caretaker" talk (the way parents talk to children)
c. talking down to them

(3) Do give your students as many opportunities as possible to make choices (cooperative learning) about what they will do in and out of the classroom. That way, they can more effectively make an investment in their own learning process.
(4) Don't discipline adults in the same way as children. If discipline problems occur (disrespect, laughing, disrupting class, etc.), first assume that your students are adults who can be reasoned with like adults.
Teaching in Between
It is of course much too absolute to consider that a "child" ceases to be a child at the age of puberty and that all of the rules of adult teaching suddenly apply! It is therefore appropriate to consider briefly the sort of variables that apply in the teaching of what we might call "young adults," "teens," or high school age children whose ages range between 12 and 18 or so.
The "terrible teens" are an age of transition, confusion, self-consciousness, growing, and changing bodies and minds. What a challenge for the teacher! Teens are "in between" childhood and adulthood, and therefore a very special set of considerations applies to teaching them. Perhaps because of the enigma of teaching teen-agers, little is specifically said in the language teaching field about teaching at this level. Nevertheless, some thoughts are worth verbalizing, even if in the form of simple reminders:

(1) Intellectual capacity adds abstract operational thought around the age of 12. Therefore, some sophisticated intellectual processing is increasingly possible. Complex problems can be solved with logical thinking. This means that linguistic metalanguage can now, theoretically, have some impact. But the success of any intellectual endeavor will be a factor of the attention a learner places on the task; therefore, if a learner is attending to self, to appearance, to being accepted, to sexual thoughts, to a weekend party, or whatever, the intellectual task at hand may suffer.
(2) Attention spans are lengthening as a result of intellectual maturation, but once again, with many diversions present in a teenager's life, those potential attention spans can easily be shortened.
(3) Varieties of sensory input are still important, but again increasing capacities for abstraction lessen the essential nature of appealing to all five senses.
(4) Factors surrounding ego, self-image, and self-esteem are at their pinnacle. Teens are ultrasensitive to how others perceive their changing physical and emotional selves along with their mental capabilities. One of the most important concerns of the secondary school teacher is to keep self-esteem high by:
oavoiding embarrassment of students at all costs
oaffirming each person's talents and strengths
oallowing mistakes and other errors to be accepted
ode-emphasizing competition between classmates
oencouraging small group work where risks are more easily made
(5) Secondary school students are of course becoming increasingly adult-like in their ability to make those occasional diversions from the "here and now" nature of immediate communicative contexts to dwell on a grammar point or vocabulary item. But even in teaching adults, care must be given not to insult them with stilted language or to bore them with overanalysis.
This chapter was an attempt to provide a number of factors for you to consider carefully as you attend to the age of your learners. At this point, these factors have come out as a series of pointers and reminders rather than anecdotal or observational references to classrooms full of students. You can make those references yourself as you observe and as you begin to teach. The next time you're in an ESL classroom, notice how someone you're observing (or how you yourself) accounted for age variables in the overall lesson, in the type of techniques that were used, in the management of the classroom, in verbal registers as well as body language, in the teacher-student exchanges, and in the relationship that those exchanges conveyed. You may actually surprise yourself by how much of what we do and say as teachers is a factor of age!

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION, ACTION, AND RESEARCH
1. Think back to the ESL lesson that was described in Chapter 1. That was an adult class. In a small group, talk about how you would go about teaching virtually the same grammar and discourse to children of, say, ages 7 and 8. Would the general topic fit? Would the same grammatical and communicative goals apply? What would you do differently? What would you delete and what would you add? How would you alter the various techniques?
2. Can you think of other considerations-beyond those mentioned in this chapter-that should be brought to bear on teaching ESL to children? to adults? to teenagers?, In -a group, brainstorm ideas then share them with the rest of the class.
3. Look again at the five major categories of things to consider as you teach children (pp. 91-94). With a partner, go through each category and come up with some specific classroom examples that illustrate the factor under consideration. For example, it was suggested that you have a sense of humor, that you use sensory aids, that you be patient and supportive, and that use context-embedded language. Give some examples of each of these and other suggestions in that section.
4. Are there any of the five factors regarding teaching ESL to children that you would like to take issue with? For example, it was noted that children do indeed have inhibitions and fragile egos. Do you agree? How do adults' and children's inhibitions differ? See if there are other factors you might want to debate. Defend your assertions with examples or research.

5. Why teach language to children at all? Aren't their innate capacities sufficient without having to be instructed? What would happen if children (in a context you specify) were just "exposed" to English with no classroom? What would they gain? What would they lose? You might want to debate this issue by assigning one group to argue for the "noclassroom" position and another group to defend the contention that language classes for children are beneficial.
6. In groups of three people each, arrange to make a series of three ESL observations: one person goes to an elementary school, another to a secondary school, and a third to a class for adults. Take careful note of the following:
•topic or subject matter of the lesson
•teacher talk and student talk
•variety and type of techniques
•discipline or behavior problems
•physical activity and sensory input
•apparent motivation and interestAfter the observation, share your perceptions in your group of three. Compare differences and see what insights you garnered about teaching at the different age levels. Share your group's findings with the rest of the class.

FOR YOUR FURTHER READING
Garvie, Edie.1990. Story as Vehicle: Teaching English to Young Children. Clevedon, U.K.: Multilingual Matters.
Intended primarily for teachers and teacher-trainers, this book presents an approach to language t‚aching that is firmly grounded in principles of second language acquisition. The story, whether it be a published story or teacher-created or student-created, is exploited as a way of promoting intrinsic motivation, interest, and language development.

Enright, D. Scott. 1991. "Supporting children's English language development in grade-level and language classrooms." In Celce-Murcia, Marianne, Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. Second Edition. Newbury House.
This chapter summarizes several recent developments in the education of school-age ESL students. It is especially useful as an overview of methodological considerations in teaching children. An excellent comprehensive annotated bibliography is appended to the chapter.
Rigg, Pat, and Enright, D. Scott. 1982. Children and ESL: Integrating Perspectives. TESOL.
A very useful anthology of relatively recent research on teaching ESL to children, this book features articles by well-known scholars in the field: Courtney Cazden, Sarah Huddelson, Pat Rigg, Carole Urzua, and Scott Enright. Holding the articles together is a common commitment to wholelanguage, contextual instruction of the second language.

Ventriglia, L.1982. Conversotions with Miguel and Maria: How Children Learn a Second Language. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. The author offers both a description of her own study of children's second language acquisition and an excellent review of the literature. This book is more research-oriented than pedagogical, but can serve as a good resource book. Among her recommendations are providing children with many sensory modalities for learning language.
3.6 Teachers' beliefs
There is a growing body of evidence to indicate that teachers are highly influenced by their beliefs, which in turn are closely linked to their values, to their views of the world and to their conceptions of their place within it. One comprehensive review of the literature on teachers' beliefs concluded that these had a greater influence than teachers' knowledge on the way they planned their lessons, on the kinds of decisions they made and on their general classroom practice (Pajares 1992). Beliefs were also found to be far more influential than knowledge in determining how individuals organise and define tasks and problems, and were better predictors of how teachers behaved in the classroom.
Beliefs are notoriously difficult to define and evaluate, but there do appear to be a number of helpful statements that we can make about them. They tend to be culturally bound, to be formed early in life and to be resistant to change. Beliefs about teaching, for example, appear to be well established by the time a student gets to college (Weinstein 1989). They are closely related to what we think we know but provide an affective filter which screens, redefines, distorts, or reshapes subsequent thinking and information processing (Nespor 1987). Our beliefs about one particular area or subject will not only be interconnected, but will also be related to other more central aspects of our personal belief systems, e.g. our attitudes and values about the world and our place within it. Because they are difficult to measure, we usually have to infer people's beliefs from the wars in which they behave rather than from what they say they believe (Agyris and Schon 1974).
We have stressed earlier the importance of teachers reflecting upon their own actions in order to make explicit their often implicit belief systems and to help them clarify what is personally meaningful and significant to them in their professional roles.

Teachers' beliefs about what learning is will affect everything that they do in the classroom, whether these beliefs are implicit or explicit. Even if a teacher acts spontaneously, or from habit without thinking about the action,' such actions are nevertheless prompted by a deep- rooted belief that may never have been articulated or made explicit. Thus teachers' deep-rooted beliefs about how languages are learned will pervade their classroom actions more than a particular methodology they are told to adopt or coursebook they follow. If the teacher-as-educator is one who is constantly re-evaluating in the light of new knowledge his or her beliefs about language, or about how language is learned, or about education as a whole, then it is crucial that teachers first understand and articulate their own theoretical perspectives.

Beliefs about learners
Teachers may hold any one or a combination of beliefs about those whom they teach. The sociologist Roland Meighan has suggested that there are at least seven different wars in which teachers can and do construe learner and that such constructions reflect individual teachers' views of the world and also have a profound influence on their classroom practice (Meighan and Meighan 1990).
Meighan suggests that learner may be construed metaphorically as:
• resisters;
• receptacies;
• raw material;
• clients'
• partners;
• individual explorers;
• democratic explorers.
He sees these constructs in terms of a continuum which reflects the nature of the teacher-learner power relationship. Thus the first three constructs are heavily teacher dominated while the latter constructs involve increasingly active learner participation.
The notion of learners as resisters sees learners as people who do not want to learn but only do so because they are made to. Such a view has given rise to the commonly associated assumption that force or punishment is the most appropriate way of overcoming such resistance in the classroom. Even at its most benign, the assumption that children do not start with what Bruner calls 'the will to learn' will lead to a view that instruction is the natural function of the teacher.
An alternative view, of course, is that children begin school full of desire to learn, but gradually, sometimes even rapidly, lose such desire as a result of their learn ing experiences (Holt 1964). The psychologist and educator William Glasser expressed this poin particularly well in his book Schools Without Failure: ”Very few children come to school failures, none come labelled as failures. It is school and school alone which pins the label of failure on children” (Glasser 1969:26).
It would of course be naive to think that all learners attending classes to learn a new language are there because they want to be. For a host of possible reasons, language teachers might meet some degree of resistance from some of their learners. However, if learners are viewed narrowly as resisters, teachers may well employ methods involving compulsion rather than see king wars of helping them to want to learn the language or to see the value in what they are doing. What we would emphasise here is that the use of force or punishment has never been found to be particularly useful in helping learners to master a language or to foster a lifelong love of languages; far more effective wars exist of helping reluctant learners. We shall take up this point further in later chapters.

Perhaps an even more common conception of learners is one in which they are seen as receptacles to be filled with knowledge. This is sometimes referred to as 'the jugs and mugs' theory. The teacher is seen as having a large jug of knowledge which is poured into the learner 'mugs' or receptacles, which in turn can only accept a certain amount of that knowledge according to the size of the learner's IQ. Here again we can see that instruction and information-giving become the natural way of working for teachers who begin with such assumptions, particularly if they also view intelligence as something which is fixed at birth and immutable. Freire (1970) describes this as the 'banking' conception of education, where learners are like bank accounts into which deposits are regularly made and drawn upon later for specific purposes such as examinations. Thus, if language teachers view their learners as receptacies, with a specific amount of language aptitude which determines their capacitr to absorb language, they will be likely to adopt methods which involve transmission of language items to their learners.

Another common metaphor conceives of learners as raw material, like clay to be moulded into a fine work of art or building material to be constructed into a sol id and well-designed building. There is much to be said in favour of such an approach insofar as most of us remember being influenced by an inspirational teacher, and this view does in fact form a part of social interactionist theories. However, there are also dangers of manipulating learners and shaping them according to the teacher's wishes.
The notion of learner as client places greater emphasis upon the identification of educational need and begins to alter the nature of the relationship between teachers and learners. Much adult foreign language learning begins with such a premise, and this view has been prevalent in teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) for same time. The prospective learners are likely to know what they want to learn and how much time and money they are prepared to invest in doing so, while the role of the teacher can be seen as attempting to meet those needs. Interestingly, while this is a common way of working with fee-paying adults in language schools, it is nevertheless still rare to involve school children in deciding what they need to learn, or in evaluating how helpful they find their lessons to be.
An alternative conception is that of learner as partner, where the emphasis is shifted from consultation to negotiation and where it is possible in Freire's terms for the teacher to 'take on the role of student amongst students'. The assumption here is not one of equality but one of a sharing, relationship within which teachers recognise that they are also learners. The starting point for this kind of teacher is not one of ”I am in charge!”, but one of ”Leťs decide .together how we can all benefit from our time together”. The underlying notions are of mutual trust and respect leading to growth and development for teachers and all their learners. This approach is best exemplified by humanist teachers such as Carl Rogers. In the language classroom, learners can be treated as partners by involving them in decisions about what activities to carry out, asking them what topics they are interested in or allowing them to select books to read. It is also a view that has underpinned work on the use of process syllabuses in language teaching.

Two further possible conceptions of learners are those of the learner as individual explorer and the learner as democratic explorer. In the first of these the role of the teacher becomes almost entirely one of facilitator working largely from a Piagetian perspective, i.e. the classroom is organised in such a way as to enable the learners to explore for themselves and come to their own conclusions with a minimum of prompting from the teacher. This particular approach became very popular with teachers of young children in the UK following the publication of the Plowden Report (1967). This is a view that has tended to pervade approaches to language teaching based on input and acquisition, i.e. the teacher's role is to provide appropriate comprehensible input, which the learners act on in their own wars, leading to language acquisition.

Democratic exploration takes this process one step further and sees it as the function of any learning group to set its own agenda, decide upon its goals and preferred wars of working, and how, if at all, it wishes to draw upon the particular knowledge and expertise of the teacher. Meighan clearly favours this particular approach, at least in working with mature learners. Although it is difficult to envisage how this could be put into practice with younger learners, perhaps the classic example of an attempt to do so is provided by A.S.Neill's alternative school, Summerhill (Neill 1962, 1967).
Approaches such as community language learning draw a little on this conceptualisation of learners. More particularly, task-based approaches to language learning which involve giving groups of learners tasks to engage in, allow groups the freedom to decide how they wish to work, although it is, of course, generally the teacher who selects the activities.

It should be readily apparent that the social constructivist approach which we favour tends to fit more comfortably with the latter end of Meighan's continuum than with the former, but it is also clear that the extent to which teachers feel able to work with their learners as democratic explorers rather than as, say, clients, often depends on factors outside of their control. In making their belief systems about learners explicit, however, teachers should be able to identify inconsistencies and frustrations in their work and thereby search for ways of bridging the inevitable gap between their espoused theories and their theories in action.
Beliefs about learning
As important as their views about learners are teachers' beliefs about learning, although the two are inextricably linked. In Chapters 1 and 2 we outlined a number of different psychological approaches to learning. We have also made the point that teachers' beliefs about what is involved in learning will influence the way in which they teach.
It is, of course, impossible to contemplate teaching in isolation from learning. The question of what makes a good teacher must ultimately be concerned with what and how and how much learners learn and what exactly that learning is for. This is just as true for the language teacher as it is for any other. We can only be really effective teachers if we are clear in our minds what we mean by learning because only then can we know what kinds of learning outcomes we want our learners to achieve. If our aim is to teach enough language items to pass an examination, then this will have significant implications for the way in which we teach. If, on the other hand, we see learning a new language as a lifelong process with much broader social, cultural and educational implications, then we will take a very different approach to teaching it.
As a result of their comprehensive review of the literature on conceptions of learning, Gow and Kember (1993) suggest that most approaches to learning can be subsumed under one of the following headings:

• a quantitative increase in knowledge;
• memorisation;
• the acquisition of facts, procedures etc. which can be retained ; and/or used in practice;
• the abstraction of meaning;
• an interpretative process aimed at the understanding of reality;
• some form of personal change.
The first three of these conceptions can be conveniently subsumed under the heading of reproductive approaches while the subsequent three can be seen as meaning-based. It would, of course, be unwise to view such approaches as mutually exclusive. Most methods used in language teaching appear to belong to several overlapping categories, and most teachers' views would incorporate a mixture of these. However, a few examples can usefully be given to illustrate these categories. 'The quantitative increase in knowledge' might lead to transmission of knowledge about how the language operates or explanation of grammar rules. The learning of vocabulary or verb tenses might belong more to 'memorisation'. Teaching learners skills such as guessing meanings of words from their context are more concerned with the 'learning of procedures which can be used in practice'.

'The abstraction of meaning' is a particularly interesting category, which appears to belong more to communicative approaches to teaching a language and techniques such as task-based listening, reading with information transfer, or tasks requiring meaningful interaction. These particular techniques would also belong to the fifth category, 'an interpretative process aimed at the understanding of reality', provided the language used conveys reality. This issue of 'purposefulness' of language is taken up in Chapter 8.
The final category, 'some form of personal change' will have particular implications for the way in which a language is taught. A belief in this form of learning would lead to the selection of activities that have personal significance or relevance to the learners leading to some personal benefit such as learning to think, learning some social skill or learning about the world. These are all issues that are taken up in future chapters.
We are now in a position to make our own statement as to what we believe learning involves, and which we consider represents central aspects of our own espoused theory.
We believe that worthwhile learning:
• is a complex process;
• produces personal change of some kind; ,
• involves the creation of new understandings which are personally relevant;
• can take a number of different forms;
• is always influenced by the context in which is occurs;
• results mainly from social interaction;
• often needs to be mediated;
• differs from individual to individual;
• is an emotional as well as a cognitive process;
• is closely related to how people feel about themselves;
• is a lifelong process.
Each of these statements reflects an important aspect of social constructivism with an additional emphasis upon the affective dimension as well as the cognitive. Each will be taken up, therefore, at different points within this book and will be represented as ongoing themes throughout.

Teachers' beliefs about themselves
At this point, therefore, it seems appropriate to turn finally in this chapter to consider how teachers' views of themselves as persons and what they believe to be the most appropriate form of social interaction with their learners can influence the learning process. Our view of education has much in common with many aspects of the humanist approach introduced in Chapter 2, particularly as exemplified by statements of the following nature:
Effective teachers create learning atmospheres which are cognitively and affectively expanding; learning atmospheres which enable the learner to become a more adequate and knowledgeable person.
(Pine and Boy 1977:iii)

It is clear that this kind of approach places great emphasis upon what the teacher as a person brings to the teaching-learning relationship and how the learner can be helped to develop as a whole person by the provision of a supportive learning environment, which allows individuals to develop in their own way.
For the humanistic teacher, teaching is essentially a personal expression of the self. As Pine and Boy express it, 'Pupils feel the personal emotional structure of the teacher long before they feel the impact of the intellectual content offered by that teacher' (op. cit.:3). This obviously has particular implications with regard to teachers' views of themselves since a teacher who lacks self-esteem will find it impossible to build the self-esteem of others. This is equally true when it comes to conveying dignity and respect. Similarly, the teacher who does not accept her learners for who they are makes it difficult for them to accept themselves. Thus, the language teacher needs to convey a sense of self-confidence in using the language whilst at the same time respecting learners' attempts to express themselves and their views in the language.

One further quality which is central to the humanistic approach is that of permissiveness. 'Permissiveness' is defined here in a very special way as 'permission to be oneself', to pursue interests and curiosity in search of meaning in one' s life, as well as the freedom to have ideas, beliefs and values.
Humanistic education is sometimes described as learner-centred teaching. However, such a definition does not do justice to the full implications of taking this approach to one's teaching. Whilst it is true that humanistic teachers begin with the premise that everything they say or do has, or could have, a significant impact on the personal growth and development of their learner, it is equally true that in every teaching act the teacher defines herself as a person. Humanistic teaching, therefore, is not just learner-centred, but person-centred. A teacher's view of teaching mirrors her view of herself and her teaching behaviour reflects her essence as a person. One natural consequence of taking such an approach is that we have to accept that teaching is an expression of values and attitudes, not just information or knowledge. Another consequence is that teachers must recognise that they themselves are constantly involved in a lifelong process of learning and change. The influence of the developmental theories of such psychologists as Maslow and Erickson, as outlined in Chapter 2, provide the foundation upon which this approach is based.
What is communicative?
Jeremy Harmer
The term 'communicative' has been used to cover a wide variety of approaches and methodological procedures. But it cannot account for both drills on the one hand and genuinely communicative activities on the other. In this article the word 'communicative´ and the nature of communication are examined and a distinction is drawn between 'communicative' and 'non-communicative' activities, each of which has its place in a balanced approach to language teaching.

The meaning of 'communicative'
Everything is 'communicative' these days. Published courses almost exclusively advertise themselves as being the latest in 'communicative methodology', and as having 'communication' as their main aim. Convention papers deal with the 'communicative use' of language, and the teaching of English as communication has changed from the title of an important article in an earlier issue of ELT Journal (Widdowson 1972) into a received truth of the English language teaching profession. No self-respecting teacher, materials designer, or applied linguist would think of teaching English as anything else.

The teacher, however, might be excused the obvious confusion he or she will feel when faced with the many different types of activity that are apparently communicative, since they range from drills to simulations, from dialogues to communication games. Johnson (1980a) shows how drills can be made communicative, and with Morrow (1979) uses the concept of an information gap to create conditions for this. Byrne (1979: Chapter 5) gives examples of written 'communication tasks' and Littlewood (1981) calls the reconstructing of story sequences (where four students have four different pictures which they use to create a story without showing those pictures to each other) a 'functional communication activity'. Abbs and Freebairn (1980a) say that their approach is communicative' in their textbook Developing Strategies, and Geddes and McAlpin (1978) list a number of communication games.

The fact remains, though, that no description of what 'communicative' really means can possibly embrace the drill and the discussion. It cannot satisfactorily include a controlled information gap exercise (where one grammatical pattern is being repeatedly practised) and the language use that occurs when students reconstruct story sequences. We cannot say that a controlled response drill is in the same class as a 'describe and draw' game (see Geddes and McAlpin 1978). Students are asked to do very different things in these activities, so that drills and discussions, for example, have exactly opposite characteristics, as do controlled information gap exercises and 'describe and draw' games.

One of the causes of confusion has been, perhaps, the idea that teaching is either communicative or it isn't; that it is, in a sense, all or nothing. Certainly both Brumfit (1978) and Johnson (1980b) seem to be searching for a communicative methodology described by Johnson as 'the Deep End Strategy', where students are put into a communicative situation (thrown in at the 'deep end') as a prelude to any instruction: all subsequent teaching is based on whether they sink or swim. But the mistake of searching for a communicative methodology is perhaps to suppose that the end and the means of arriving there are necessarily the same.1 Despite various claims for various methods, we do not know how or why people learn languages, nor can we say with any absolute certainty which techniques are more or less successful. Students can learn to communicate in many different ways and as a result of many different techniques. Few would deny, for example, the usefulness of formal grammatical study, but no-one would claim that therein lies the secret of language learning. Choral repetition is a technique that is still widely used (and still appreciated by many beginning students), but we would find it difficult to fit it into an exclusively communicative methodology. Good simulations may well meet a desire for communicative learning, but a controlled dialogue involving the functions of asking for and giving opinions, for example, can hardly be called communicative if students are only asked to apply an identical formula to different information. There is, after all, nothing especially communicative about teaching functions! All these techniques may well have a place in the EFL classroom, but the suggestion that there is a communicative methodology cannot account for their different characteristics.
What I am suggesting is that the concept of 'communication' and 'communicative' should not be applied to a methodology. Either it will prohibit the use of many tried and tested techniques, or it will have to have a definition so broad as to be meaningless. Despite, for example, Munby (1978), syllabuses cannot be communicative either. They can only supply you with lists of language or behavioural objectives. Abbs and Freebairn (1980a) say that their book is based on 'notional and functional categories of language', and that 'the approach, therefore, is communicative - what students need to express through language is the most important criterion for selecting, grading and organizing the language presented in the course' (iv). However, we must question the 'communicativeness' of the book if it is merely the language content that gives it this label.

In the teaching and learning and methodology of a foreign language, it is only activities within the syllabus and methodology that can be classed as communicative. Whatever the aim of any technique, only an assessment of what students are asked to do when it is being used can lead us to categorize it in terms of its communicative merits. The main purpose of this article is to suggest criteria by which to arrive at such assessments. We can perhaps do this best by coming to some conclusions about the nature of communication in real life.

Communication: what it involves
Communication2 is, of course, extremely complex, but there are certain generalizations that can be made which have particular relevance for the learning and teaching of languages.

When two people are involved in conversation, we can be fairly certain that the one who is speaking wants to do so. 'Want' is used here in a general sense, since speaking may be forced on the participants in some way, but they must still feel a desire to speak, otherwise they would keep quiet. The speaker also has a purpose; this may be to disagree or to charm, to flatter or to be rude; to give information or to express pleasure. In each of these cases he or she is interested in conveying that purpose to the listener. In order to do this, a speaker selects from his or her language store the language that he or she thinks will best help to achieve the purpose. In an effective piece of communication (where both participants want the communication to succeed), it is probable that the listener will want to listen to what the speaker says and will be particularly interested in the speaker's purpose-in other words, in what the speaker is trying to say. Although the listener may have a clear idea of the direction the conversation will take, he or she will nevertheless have to be ready to process a great variety of language in order to understand efficiently what is being said.

These comments do not just apply to two participants in a conversation, however. They also apply to people writing and receiving letters and to lecturers giving talks. They apply to novelists and radio announcers (and their readers and listeners).
We can represent these generalizations in the following way:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| |
SPEAKER/ - Wants to say/write something |
WRITER - Has a communicative purpose |
| - Selects from language store |
| |
LISTENER/ - Wants to listen to/read 'something' |
READER - Interested in communicative purpose |
| - Processes an assortment of language |
| |
----------------------------------------------------------------->--------
(As the dotted lines indicate, the speaker can become the listener, and vice- versa.)
Closely allied to this general analysis is the concept of the information gap. Suppose, for example, that A (a man waiting for a bus) has the following conversation with B (a woman at the bus stop) :

A: Excuse me, could you tell me the time?
B: Certainly. It's three o'clock.
A may have many reasons for speaking. He may, for example, genuinely want to know the time. In this case he has not got information that B has (the time) and there is therefore a 'gap' in the information they possess. A's conversation is designed to close that gap. If, however, A's question is merely an excuse to get into conversation with the woman, there is still a gap, though of a different nature. Now it is A who has some information (e.g. his desire to engage B in conversation) which B does not possess.
In many really communicative activities where students have a communicative purpose, a gap of this kind will be necessary, for if there is no gap there is often no reason (or purpose) to communicate.

Communicative and non-communicative activities
We can now come to some conclusions about what characterizes a communicative activity. We can say that students must have a desire to communicate, and there must be some communicative purpose to their communication. This implies, of course, that the students' attention will be focused on the content of what they are saying, rather than the form. They will use a wide variety of language, and the teacher will not intervene. (By 'intervene', I mean tell the students they have made mistakes in their English, correct their pronunciation, etc.) In a communicative activity we would not expect the materials which the students were using would control their language (e.g. restrict it to the use of one grammatical form, etc.). These characteristics can apply at one end of a continuum. At the other end of the continuum lie 'non-communicative' activities. For non-communicative activities there will be no desire to communicate, nor will 166 Jeremy Harmer students have a communicative purpose. Where students are involved in repetition or substitution drills, for example, they will be motivated not by a desire to achieve a communicative objective, but by the need to attain accuracy. The emphasis will be on the form of the language, not the content, the teacher will intervene to ensure accuracy, and the materials used will often be designed to concentrate on a particular item of language. We can represent this continuum in the following way:
Non-communicative activities Communicatice activities
No communicative purpose A communicative purpose
No desire to communicate A desire to communicate
Form not contentContent not form
One language item Variety of language
Teacher inventionNo teacher invention
Material control No material control
We now have a basis for assessing some of the activities mentioned at the befginning of this article. A 'communicative drill' (even where it is based on an information gap, thus creating a communicative purpose and perhaps a desire to communicate) is a contradiction in terms, since it hardly meets our communicative criteria. Drills are, after all, form-based and deal with only one or two language items at a time. The purpose of a drill, after all, is largely manipulative, to encourage the accurate reproduction of prescribed language. And even where students are left to work in pairs, the teacher will probably check accuracy by getting feedback. However, such information gap based activity is perhaps not as extreme an example of the 'non-communicative' as a drill from Abbs and Freebairn (1980b) in which students are given a prompt sentence and have to respond with a set formula. The example is as follows
You are at a party.
Meet John. He teaches at the High School.
How funny! I used to teach at the High School too. (37)

Students then have to respond in the same way to sentences such as 'And this is Mark. Mark has just got an old black Volkswagen.'
Morrow's (1979) information gap activity (where the student has a train timetable with various bits of information missing which can be completed only by getting the information from his or her partner without looking at the partner's timetable) is moving towards the 'communicative' end of the continuum, but still suffers from materials control.

The 'Describe and draw' game, however, does meet our communicative requirements. One student has a picture which his partner must reproduce without looking at the original. The only way to achieve this purpose is to use all and any of the language at the students' command. The same is true of the 'reconstructing a story sequence' activity; students will use a great variety of language as they find out what is in each other's pictures, and use this information to construct a story. Although the desire to communicate has been created artificially, the students do have some communicative purpose to achieve through the use of language. Many of Byrne's (1979) written communication activities meet our communicative requirements: students have to write job application letters, which are then judged by other students and on the basis of which a candidate is chosen; students write individual news items which are then assembled into news broadcasts, etc.

A genuinely communicative activity, then, must comply with the characteristics I have detailed here. Few people, however, would suggest a language programme based exclusively on such activities (but see, for example, Allwright 1976). Neither should a methodology confine itself rigidly to activities that omit any possibility of formal and controlled language work. There is nothing intrinsically 'wrong' with the drill with an information gap, or the example above from Developing Strategies. But neither is communicative or sits comfortably in a communicative 'approach'. The job of a syllabus-or course-designer is surely to work out an efficacious balance between non-communicative and communicative activities, and the many possibilities between these extremes, of which only a small number have been mentioned here. Language learning can then be judged not according to whether it is communicative, but according to the balance of activities that students are involved in.
Notes
1.This point was made forcefully by Brumfit at the VIIth MEXTESOL Convention in Acapulco, Mexico (October 1980). The approach to teaching outlined in his 1978 article, however, does seem to suggest an overall strategy.
2.I am grateful to Jane Willis for comments on an earlier version of the nature of communication and the communication continuum.
3.It is not being suggested that Developing Strategies is in some ways a 'bad' book; merely that it is (like other popular textbooks which it has been chosen as an example of) often non-communicative.

References
Abbs, B. and I. Freebairn. 1980a. Developing Strategies: Teacher's Book. London: Longman.
Abbs. B. and I. Freebairn. 1980b. Developing Strategies: Student's Book. London: Longman. Allwright. R. 1976. 'Language learning through com- munication practice' in ELT Documents 76.3. London : The British Council.
Brumfit, C. 1978. ' "Communicative" language teach- ing: an assessment' in P. Strevens (ed.). In Honour of A. S. Hornby. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Byrne, D. 1979. Teaching Writlng Skills. London: Longman.
Geddes, M. and J. McAlpin. 1978. 'Communication games 2' in S. Holden (ed.). Visual Aids for Classroom Interaction. London: Modern English Publications.
Johnson, K. 1980a. 'Making drills communicative'. Modem English Teacher 7.4.
Johnson, K. 1980b. 'The deep-end strategy in com- municative language teaching'. Mextesol Joumal 4.2.
Littlewood, W. 1981, Communicative Language Teaching: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morrow, K. 1979. 'Asking questions'. ELT Journal 33.2: 97-9.
Munby, J. 1978. Communicative Syllabus Design. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Widdowson, H. G. 1972. 'The teaching of English as communication'. ELT Journal 27.7:15-19.

Teacher talk and the classroom context
Richard Cullen

In the era of communicative language teaching, analyses of teacher talk typically focus on the characteristics that make, or fail to make such talk ‘communicative’. In most cases, the criteria for communicativeness are taken from what is felt to constitute communicative behaviour in the world outside the classroom. Thus, communicative classrooms are held to be those in which features of genuine communication are evident, and, by exclusion, classes where they are not present are considered to be uncommunicative. In the case of teacher talk, similar criteria might be used to assess such aspects of classroom language use as the kind of questions teachers ask their students, or the way they respond to student contributions. In this article, I argue that this analysis of teacher talk is oversimplistic, and ultimately unhelpful to teachers since its attempt to characterize communicativeness only in terms of features of authentic communication which pertain outside the classroom ignores the reality of the classroom context and the features which make for effective communication within that context.

Teacher talk:
quantity and quality
Until comparatively recently, teacher talk in the EFL classroom was considered to be something of a danger area for language teachers, and trainee teachers were warned to use it sparingly. ‘Good’ teacher talk meant ‘little’ teacher talk, since it was thought that too much teacher talking time (TTT) deprived students of opportunities to speak. Interest in teacher talk within the profession has since shifted away from a concern with quantity towards a concern with quality: while the question of how much teachers talk is still important, more emphasis is given to how effectively they are able to facilitate learning and promote communicative interaction in their classroom through, for example, the kind of questions they ask, the speech modifications they make when talking to learners, or the way they react to student errors (see, for example, Nunan 1989).
There are a number of good reasons for this shift in emphasis. Firstly, teacher talk is now generally recognized as a potentially valuable source of comprehensible input for the learner. Since this is essential for language acquisition (Krashen 1981) getting teachers to reduce the amount of their talk would not necessarily be in the interests of the learner. Secondly, so far all attempts by trainers to root out the TIT phenomenon have failed. This is particularly true in parts of the world where the teacher’s role is traditionally one of transmitter of knowledge and values, and where a preoccupation with reducing TIT would be unrealistic, as well as culturally inappropriate. Thirdly, there is evidence from classroom research that aspects of teacher talk, such as the kind of questions teachers ask, can significantly affect the quantity and quality of student interaction in the lesson (Brock 1986), and are also amenable to the effects of training (Long and Sato 1983).

The notion of communicative teacher talk
Recent studies (e.g. Thombury 1996) have tended to focus on the extent to which teacher talk supports a communicative environment in the classroom, and specifically on how authentic it is - judged by how far it shares features of so-called authentic communication outside the classroom. Thus Nunan (1987) attempted to evaluate whether classes which purported to be communicative really were so by determining the extent to which genuine communication was evident in them. He suggested that

genuine communication is characterized by uneven distribution of information, the negotiation of meaning (through, for example, clarification requests and confirmation checks), topic nomination and negotiation of more than one speaker, and the right of interlocutors to decide whether to contribute to an interaction or not . . . In genuine communication, decisions about who says what to whom are up for grabs. (Nunan 1987: 137)

Using characteristics such as these as criteria of communicativeness, Nunan’s conclusion from his own investigations into classroom practice was that ‘there is growing evidence that, in communicative classes,
interactions may, in fact, not be very communicative at all’ (ibid.: 144). A similar conclusion is reached by Kumaravadivelu (1993: 12-13):

In theory, a communicative classroom seeks to promote interpretation, expression and negotiation of meaning . . . [Learners] should be encouraged to ask for information, seek clarification, express an opinion, agree and/or disagree with peers and teachers . . . In reality, however, such a communicative classroom seems to be a rarity. Research studies show that even teachers who are committed to communicative language teaching can fail to create opportunities for genuine interaction in their classrooms.
In these arguments, the criteria for assessing the communicativeness of classroom discourse and, by extension, of teacher talk, are taken from what is perceived to constitute communicative behaviour in the world outside the classroom. The fact that genuine communication appears to comprise characteristics such as ‘negotiation of meaning’ and ‘topic nomination by more than one speaker’ becomes de facto a reason for incorporating them into classroom discourse, and for judging the communicativeness or otherwise of classrooms according to whether or not these features are present. The argument I wish to develop in this article is that attempts to define communicative talk in the classroom must be based primarily on what is or is not communicative in the context of the classroom itself, rather than on what may or may not be communicative in other contexts; and that the application of criteria of communicativeness solely on the basis of social behaviour which exists in certain contexts outside the classroom could result in an inappropriate and ultimately unattainable model for the majority of language teachers to follow, similar to the earlier preoccupation with teacher talking time.

Communication and context
One might, to start with, take issue with the description of authentic communication on which the argument is based. Would it be true to say, for example, that in genuine communication, decisions about who says what to whom are ‘up for grabs’? It might be generally true of informal gatherings of groups of friends, but certainly not of more formal gatherings, such as staff or board-room meetings. Communication at such events tends to follow a very different pattern, determined by their own rules and conventions, but that does not make it any less ‘genuine’ or authentic. Similarly, the classroom, typically a large, formal gathering which comes together for pedagogical rather than social reasons, will also have its own rules and conventions of communication, understood by all those present; these established patterns are likely to be very different from the norms of turn-taking and communicative interaction which operate in small, informal, social gatherings outside. Any analysis of the characteristics of the communicative classroom needs to take these differences into account.

This is not to deny the importance of analyses of the properties of spoken discourse found in contexts outside the classroom (e.g. Hoey 1992) in shedding light on what our wider teaching goals should be, and to that extent suggesting ways in which the discourse of the classroom could be moderated, in order that these goals might be more successfully achieved. But that is a rather different matter from suggesting that classrooms only need to replicate communicative behaviour outside the classroom in order to become communicative.

Features of teacher talk
If we pursue the case for replicating communicative behaviour outside the classroom, there are a number of characteristics of teacher talk which we might identify as being communicative (see Thornbury 1996).
Some of these are:
1 The use of ‘referential’ questions, where the teacher asks the class something (e.g. ‘What did you do at the weekend?‘) to which he or she does not know the answer, and which therefore has a genuine communicative purpose. This is in contrast to typical ‘display’ questions (e.g. comprehension questions on a reading text) to which the teacher already has the answer, and only asks so that the class can display their understanding or knowledge. Insights from analyses of discourse inside and outside the classroom (e.g. Long and Sato 1983) have revealed very marked differences between typical classroom talk and non-classroom talk in this respect.

2 Content feedback by the teacher, where the teacher’s response to student contributions focuses on the content of what the student says-the message-rather than on the form (e.g. the correctness of the grammar or pronunciation).

3 The use of speech modifications, hesitations, and rephrasing in the teacher’s own talk, e.g. when explaining, asking questions, giving instructions, etc.

4 Attempts to negotiate meaning with the students, e.g. through requests for clarification and repetition, and giving opportunities for the students to interrupt the teacher and do the same. I shall refer to the features listed above as List A. Conversely, there are a number of features of teacher talk which would be regarded as non-communicative, in that they do not represent the way language is used in many situations outside the classroom, and which I shall refer to as List
B. Examples of these features are:

1 Exclusive or excessive use of display questions.

2 Form-focused feedback, i.e. feedback by the teacher which only shows interest in the correct formation of the students’ contributions (rather than the content).

3 ‘Echoing’ of students’ responses, when the teacher repeats what a student has just said for the benefit of the whole class (something which rarely happens in social intercourse).
4 Sequences of predictable IRF (initiation-response-feedback) discourse chains (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975) in which the teacher initiates the chain (typically by asking a question), a student responds, and the teacher then gives feedback to the student (e.g. ‘good’) before initiating another chain with another question. The structure of spoken discourse outside the classroom is usually more complex and flexible than this (Hoey 1992).
The classroom context
The problem with this analysis is that defining communicative teacher talk purely in terms of the norms of communication outside the classroom ignores the context of the classroom itself, and what is communicative within that context. It thus presents us with a one-dimensional view of classroom talk, ignoring the fact that ‘the classroom is a unique social environment with its own human activities and its own conventions governing these activities’ (Breen and Candlin 1980: 98).

In what way does this uniqueness affect the discourse of the classroom, and teacher talk in particular? If we look at some of the characteristics of teacher talk in List B above, it is not difficult to see how they may, in fact, perform important communicative functions in the classroom context. Take the phenomenon of echoing students responses. The teacher may have perfectly valid communicative reasons for doing this, such as making sure that everyone in the class has heard what Student A has just said, so that a discussion can continue with everybody following it. In a large class, echoing by the teacher may be the quickest and most effective way of doing this. Equally important is the convention in many classes throughout the world that the teacher’s repetition of a student’s response acts as a signal confirming that the response is correct. The students understand this convention, and the teacher’s failure to observe it may well result in puzzlement, insecurity, and hence a malfunction in classroom communication.

In the same way, few (with some notable exceptions) would deny that providing feedback on form has a place in language teaching. If this is the case, there must be ways of providing it which are more or less effective, and more or less communicative, in the sense of communicating clearly and successfully to the students concerned. Rather than regard such discourse as essentially uncommunicative, it would seem more productive - and more realistic in terms of our expectations of teachers – to consider how to provide feedback in a way which is as communicative as possible in the context of the classroom and which assists in the attainment of the pedagogical purposes for which the students are there.

Teacher talk in action
The following fragment of a secondary school English lesson in Egypt, transcribed from a video recording of the lesson, illustrates the point that what appears to be non-communicative teacher talk is not necessarily so in the classroom context. The context is a third-year class in a mixed preparatory (lower secondary) school in Cairo. There are about 35 students in the classroom, seated at individual desks, facing the teacher at the front of the class. The teacher is preparing the students for a reading passage in their textbooks about the Egyptian writer Tahaa Hussein. The classroom interaction recorded here is heavily teacher-led, and thus very typical of the classroom discourse of large classes throughout the world:
T: All right. Who can give me . . . er . . . a name of a great writer in the English-speaking world? In the English-speaking world? The name of a great writer. Right.
S1: Charles Dickens.
T: Charles Dickens. OK. What novel are we studying from Charles Dickens this year?
S2: [indistinct reply]
S3: A Tale of Two Cities.
T: A Tale of Two Cities. All right. We say that Dickens is a writer. Who can give me another name for the word ‘writer’ - a more specialized term for the word ‘writer’?
S4: Shakespeare. [indistinct reply]
T: Er . . Um. . . That’s not what I want. Shakespeare also is a great writer, but I want . . . Yes?
S4: Novelist?
T: A novelist. That’s what I want, Mazin. So I want the word ‘novelist’. So we have the word ‘novel’. [writes on blackboard] We say that A Tale of Two Cities is a ... ?
ss: Novel.
T: A novel. And the writer of A Tale of Two Cities is a . . . ?
ss: Novelist.
T: A novelist. [writes on blackboard] Is a novelist. OK. He said – was it you, Mazin, who said ‘Shakespeare’? Is Shakespeare also a novelist? Is Shakespeare a novelist?
ss: Yes.
T: Er no. I don’t agree with you. Shakespeare used to write plays. He used to write . . . ?
Ss: Plays.

T: Can you remember some of his plays?
S5: Hamlet.
T: Hamlet.
S6: As You Like It.
T: As You Like It. Fine.
S7: The Tempest.
T: The Tempest, fine. We say Shakespeare was a ‘play . . . wright’. [writes on BB] A playwright. Remember this is not ‘write’, W-R-I-T-E, This is playwright, W-R-I-G-H-T. A playwright. He was a writer of plays. Now about our great writer Tahaa Hussein, Tahaa Hussein. Who can give me one word to describe Tahaa Hussein? As many words as you can. Everybody knew him or nobody knew him or few people knew him? Who can give me a word to describe him?
SS: Blindness.
T: Er... blindness. Er . , . do we say Tahaa Hussein was blindness or Tahaa Hussein was . . . ?
S9: Blind.
T: Blind. OK. Tahaa Hussein was blind. I’m looking for a word to describe his fame. A word to describe his fame. So we say that he was a . . . ?
Ss: Popular.
T: Popular. He was . . . ?
Ss: Popular.
T: Tahaa Hussein was popular. Popular. All right, can you give me the name of a popular actor in Egypt? Popular actor in Egypt. Popular actor.
If we use the descriptors of communicative and uncommunicative teacher talk outlined in the foregoing discussion, this would probably be classified as an essentially uncommunicative fragment of classroom discourse. There would appear to be few, if any, List A characteristics and plenty of List B ones. The teacher’s questions are all display questions, since their purpose is to find out what the students know about the writers he introduces, thus enabling them to display their knowledge. Feedback from the teacher to the students’ responses is either an acknowledgement that the answer is acceptable (e.g. by echoing, or by a comment such as ‘fine’) or an indication that it needs correcting (‘Er . . . blindness. Er . . . do we say Tahaa Hussein was blindness . . . ?‘). The extract also contains a good deal of echoing, and the structure of the discourse follows a very distinctive IRF pattern.

In the context of the classroom, however, one could argue that many communicative aspects of the discourse are illustrated here. The teacher is following a carefully structured sequence of questions leading to clear pedagogical goals - the teaching of the vocabulary items ‘novelist’ and ‘popular’. He tries to find out what the students know before telling them himself, and in the process responds on the spot to an unexpected student response (‘Shakespeare’), and makes a small teaching episode out of it. The feedback he gives the students is clear and unambiguous, and it is equally clear from the video recording of the lesson that he has their undivided attention. One could argue, too, that his use of echoing helps to ensure that this attention is not lost as he moves the class towards the vocabulary items he wishes to focus on. The teaching, in short, is effective, and the teacher’s talk - his use of questions and his feedback moves - is supportive of learning.

Within the context of the classroom therefore, and the norms of communication that operate there, it is surely meaningless and unhelpful to classify this, and other similar examples of pedagogically effective classroom discourse, as uncommunicative, simply because they fail to exhibit features of communication which are found in contexts outside the classroom. Communicative language teaching means communicative teaching as well as communicative use of language, and defining the notion of ‘communicative’ in relation to teacher talk must therefore take account of the teacher’s dual role as instructor as well as interlocutor.

I do not wish to imply from this that there is no place in the classroom for the kind of features of genuine communication described in List A, or that teachers will not benefit from an awareness of different ways of operating in the classroom involving, for example, the increased use of referential questions, and responding to the content as well as the form of what students say in class. The inclusion of such features might well enhance this particular teacher’s effectiveness by stimulating more productive and varied use of English by his students. To that extent, the study of discourses outside the classroom can serve to enrich the interaction and the pedagogical effectiveness of what goes on inside the classroom. But we should not conclude from this that the absence of features of communication characteristic of discourses in the world outside the classroom automatically renders classroom discourse uncommunicative, since to do so is to ignore the peculiar nature and purpose of the classroom encounter.
Categorising teacher talk: way forward
With regard to defining the notion of ‘communicative teacher talk’, I a would suggest that rather than comparing the way teachers talk in the classroom with the way people talk outside it, a more productive approach would be to identify categories of teachers’ verbal behaviour in the classroom, and attempt to determine what it means to be communicative in each one, and what might constitute a communicative balance of behaviours for different teaching and learning purposes. The following six categories are adapted from a list of categories of classroom verbal behaviour in Bowers (1980), cited in Malamah-Thomas (1987), identified through a process of classroom observation and analysis of lesson transcripts:

- questioning/eliciting
- responding to students’ contributions
- presenting/explaining
- organizing/giving instructions
- evaluatingicorrecting
-‘ sociating’/establishing and maintaining classroom rapport.

In order to determine how communicative a teacher’s use of a particular category, such as questioning, is in a particular lesson, one would take into account not only the extent to which particular questions engaged the students in meaningful, communicative use of language, but also the pedagogical purpose of the questions asked, and the teacher’s success in communicating this purpose early to the learners. In the same way, a teacher’s classroom instructions might be assessed as being more or less communicative according to how clearly they were understood and followed, whether they were sufficient or even superfluous, and whether the teacher allowed opportunities for the students to seek clarification and to ‘negotiate meaning’.

There are three important advantages, as I see it, in this approach to describing and evaluating teacher talk. Firstly, the categories of verbal behaviour are rooted firmly in the reality of the classroom and on what typically goes on there. Secondly, the criteria for assessing communicative use of classroom language in each of these categories are likewise based on what it takes to be communicative in the context of the classroom itself, rather than in some outside context. The model of communicative teacher talk emerging from such an approach should thus reflect the primary function of teacher talk, which is to support and enhance learning. Providing a model of the way language is used for communication in the real world may be an important part of that function, but it is not the only way in which teacher talk supports language learning: it is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Thirdly, a model of communicative language teaching which recognizes the importance of the pedagogical function of teacher talk within the classroom context, and what it means to be communicative within that context, is likely to be a more realistic and attainable model for teachers to aspire to than one which insists on the replication of features of genuine communication as the only measure of genuine communicative teaching.
References
Breen, M. and C. Candlin. 1980. ‘The essentials of a communicative curriculum in language teaching’. Applied Linguistics 1/2: 89-112.
Brock, C. 1986. ‘The effects of referential questions in ESL classroom discourse’. TESOL Quarterly 20/1: 47-59.
Bowers, R. 1980. ‘Verbal behaviour in the language teaching classroom’. Unpublished PhD thesis, Reading University.
Hoey, M. 1992. ‘Some properties of spoken discourse’ in R. Bowers and C. Brumfit (eds.). Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching: Review of ELT 2/1. London: Macmillan.
Krashen, S. 1981. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon.
Kumaravadivelu, B. 1993. ‘Maximizing learning potential in the communicative classroom’. ELT Journal 47/1: 12-21.
Long, M. and C. Sato. 1983. ‘Classroom foreigner talk discourse: forms and functions of teachers’ questions’ in H. Seliger and M. Long (eds.).Classroom-oriented Research in Second Language Acquisition. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House.
Malamah-Thomas, A. 1987. Classroom Interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nunan, D. 1987. ‘Communicative language teaching: making it work’. ELT Journal 41/2: 136-45.
Nunan, D. 1989. Understanding Language Classrooms. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall.
Sinclair, J. and R. Coulthard. 1975. Towards an Analysis of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thornbury, S. 1996. ‘Teachers research teacher talk’. ELT Journal 50/4: 279-89.

The author
Richard Cullen is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Language Studies at Canterbury Christ Church College. He has worked for the British Council as an English Language Teaching Officer in teacher education on development projects in Egypt, Bangladesh, and Tanzania. He has also taught and trained teachers in Nepal and Greece. His professional interests include teacher and trainer-training, classroom discourse, phonology, and the teaching and learning of grammar.
E-mail:

H.Douglas Brown: Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. Prentice Hall Regents, 1994

LANGUAGE TESTING
The principal theme running through this book has been the importance of theory building in teaching foreign languages. The assumption is that the best teacher is the teacher who devises classroom methods and techniques that derive from a comprehensive knowledge of the total process of language learning, of what is happening within the learner and within the teacher and in the interaction between the two. All of this knowledge, however, remains somewhat abstract in the mind of the teacher unless it can be empirically tested in the real world. It is one thing to have a thorough grasp of the principles of foreign language learning and teaching and another to creatively formulate specific hypotheses about language learning in particular contexts and to garner empirical support for those hypotheses.
That support can be gathered by means of careful measurement of the language competence of learners in given situations. That is, your theory of second language acquisition can be put into practice every day in the classroom, but you will never know how valid your theory is unless you systematically measure the success of your learners and consequently, your theory-in-practice. It is to that end that this chapter takes up general considerations, of what it is that you, the teacher, need to know about language testing.
What is a Test?
Whether we realize it or not, we test every day in virtually every cognitive effort we make. When we read a book, listen to the news on TV, or prepare a meal, we are testing hypotheses and making judgments. Any time we "try" something - a new recipe, a different tennis racquet, a new pair of shoes - we are testing. We are formulating a judgment about something on the basis of a sample of behavior. Language learners are testing their newly acquired forms of language almost every time they speak. They devise hypotheses about how the language forms are structured and how certain functions are expressed in forms. On the basis of the feedback they receive, they make judgments and decisions. Language teachers also test, informally and intuitively, in every contact with learners. As a learner speaks or writes or indicates either aural or reading comprehension, the teacher makes a judgment about the performance and from that judgment infers certain competence on the part of the learner. Classroom-oriented informal testing is an everyday and very common activity in which teachers engage almost intuitively.
A test, in plain, ordinary words, is a method of measuring a person´s ability or knowledge in a given area. The definition captures the essential components of a test. A test is first a method. There is a set of techniques, procedures, test items, that constitute an instrument of some sort. And that method generally requires some performance or activity on the part of either the testee or the tester or both. The method may be quite intuitive and informal, as in the case of judging offl1and someone's authenticity of pronunciation. Or it may be quite explicit and structured, as in a multiple-choice technique in which correct responses have already been specified by some "objective" means.

Next, a test has the purpose of measuring. Some measurements are rather broad and inexact while others are quantified in mathematically precise terms. The difference between formal and informal testing exists to a great degree in the nature of the quantification of data. Informal tests, the everyday intuitive judging that we do as laypersons or teachers, are difficult to quantify. Judgments are rendered in rather global terms. For example, it is common to speak of a "good" tennis player, "fair" performance by an actor in a play, or a "poor" reader. In formal testing, in which carefully planned techniques of assessment are used, quantification is important, especially for comparison either within an individual (say, at the beginning and the end of a course) or across individuals.
A test measures a person's ability or knowledge. Care must be taken in any test to understand who the testees are. What is their previous experience- their entry behavior? Is the test appropriate for them? How are scores to be interpreted for individuals? '

Also being measured in a test is, ability or knowledge-that is, competence. A test samples performance but infers certain competence. A driving test for a driver's license is a test requiring a sample of performance, but that performance is us ed by the tester to infer someone's general competence to drive a car. A language test samples language behavior and infers general ability in a language. A test of reading comprehension may consist of some questions following one or two paragraphs, a tiny sample of a second language learner's total reading behavior. From the results of that test the examiner infers a certain level of general reading ability.
Finally, a test measures a given area. In the case of a proficiency test, even though the actual 'performance' on the test involves only a sampling of skills, that area is overall proficiency in a language-general competence, in all skills of a language. Other tests may have more specific criteria. A test of pronunciation might well be a test only of a particular phonemic minimal pair in a language. One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in constructing adequate tests is to measure the criterion and not inadvertently something else.

Practicality
The foregoing discussion implicitly dealt with the three requirements of a "good" test: practicality, reliability, and validity. If these three axiomatic criteria are carefully met, a test should then be administerable within given constraints, be dependable, and actually measure what it intends to measure.
A test ought to be practical-within the means of financial limitations, time constraints, ease of administration, and scoring and interpretation. A test that is prohibitively expensive is impractical. A test of language proficiency that takes a student 10 hours to complete is also impractical. A test that requires individual one-to-one proctoring is impractical for a group of 500 people and only a handful of examiners. A test that takes a few minutes for a student to take and several hours for the examiner to correct is impractical for a large number of testees and one examiner if results are expected within a short time. A test that can be scored only by computer is impractical if the test takes place a thousand miles away from the nearest computer. The value and quality of a test are dependent upon such nitty-gritty, practical considerations.
One important aspect of practicality that testing researchers have pointed out is that a test ought to have what Oller (1979:52) called instructional value, that is, "it ought to be possible to use the test to enhance the delivery of instruction in student populations." Testing and teaching are interrelated, as we shall see later in this chapter. Teachers need to be able to make clear and useful interpretations of test data in order to understand their students better. A test that is too complex or too sophisticated may not be of practical use to the teacher.

Reliability
A reliable test is a test that is consistent and dependable. Sources of unreliability may lie in the test itself or in the scoring of the test, known respectively as test reliability and rater (or scorer) reliability. If you give the game test to the game subject or matched subjects on two different occasions, the test itself should yield similar results; it should have test reliability. A test of skating ability, for example, should be reasonably consistent from one day to the next. However, if one skating test is conducted on bumpy ice and another on smooth ice, the reliability of the test - of one aspect of the test, at least - is suspect. I once witnessed the administration of a test of aural comprehension in which a tape recorder played items for comprehension, but because of street noise outside the testing room, some students in the room were prevented from hearing the tape accurately. That was a clear case of unreliability. Some- times a test yields unreliable results because of factors beyond the control of the test writer, such as illness, a "bad day," or no sleep the night before.

Scorer reliability is the consistency of scoring by two or more scorers. If very subjective techniques are employed in the scoring of a test, one would not expect to find high scorer reliability. A test of authenticity of pronunciation in which the scorer is to assign a number between one and five might be unreliable if the scoring directions are not clear. If scoring directions are clear and specific as to the exact details the judge should attend to, then such scoring can become reasonably consistent and dependable. In tests of writing skills scorer reliability is not easy to achieve since writing proficiency involves numerous traits that are difficult to define. But as Brown and Bailey (1984) pointed out, the careful specification of an analytical scoring instrument can increase scorer reliability.

Validity
By far the most complex criterion of a good test is validity, the degree to which the test actually measures what it is intended to measure. A valid test of reading ability is one that actually measures reading ability and not 20/20 vision, previous knowledge in a subject, or some other variable of questionable relevance. To measure writing ability, one might conceivably ask students to write as many words as they can in 15 minutes, then simply count the words for the final score. Such a test would be practical and reliable; the test would be easy to administer, and the scoring quite dependable. But it would hardly constitute a valid test of writing ability unless some considerations were given to the communication and organization of ideas, among other factors. Some have felt that standard language proficiency tests, with their context-reduced, CALP-oriented language and limited stretches of discourse, are not valid measures of language "proficiency" since they do not appear to tap into the communicative competence of the learner. There is good reasoning behind such criticism (Duran 1985); nevertheless, what such proficiency tests lack in validity, they gain in practicality and reliability. We will return to the question of large-scale proficiency testing in a later section of this chapter.
How does one establish the validity of a test? Statistical correlation with other related measures is a standard method. But ultimately, validity can only be established by observation and theoretical justification. There is no final, absolute, and objective measure of validity. We have to ask questions that give us convincing evidence that a test accurately and sufficiently measures the testee for the particular purpose, or objective, or criterion, of the test.
Consider, for example, the common practice in the United States of testing a person's ability to drive an automobile. Intuitively, we would conclude that a valid test of driving ability should include an actual sample of a person's behind-the-wheel behavior. However, in many localities a paper-and-pencil test of road signs and traffic regulations is a sufficient criterion for renewal of a driver's license. Is such a test valid? Observational studies seem to bear out the contention that no subsequent driving test is needed, but it is doubtful that the written test actually predicts the quality of driving ability. It is more likely that simply previous experience in driving is the best predictor of good driving ability. The paper-and-pencil license-renewal test probably has little validity for predicting good driving; what it does measure is knowledge of various regulations, which is only a small part of total driving ability.

In tests of language, validity is supported most convincingly by subsequent personal observation of teachers and peers. The validity of a high score on the final exam of a foreign language course will be substantiated by "actual" proficiency in the language (if the claim is that a high score is indicative of high proficiency). A classroom test designed to assess mastery of a point of grammar in communicative use will have validity if test scores correlate either with observed subsequent behavior or with other communicative measures of the grammar point in question.
How can teachers be somewhat assured that a test, whether it is a standardized test or one which has been constructed for classroom use, is indeed valid? The technical procedures for validating tests are complex and require specialized knowledge. But two major types of validation are important for classroom teachers: content validity and construct validity.

Content Validity
If a test actually samples the class of situations, that is, the universe of subject matter about which conclusions are to be drawn, it is said to have con- tent validity. The test actually involves the testee in a sample of the behavior that is being measured. You can usually determine content validity, observationally, if you can clearly define the achievement that you are measuring. A test of tennis competency that asks someone to run a 100-yard dash lacks con- tent validity. If you are trying to assess a person's ability to speak a second language in a conversational setting, a test that asks the learner to answer paper-and-pencil multiple-choice questions requiring grammatical judgments does not achieve content validity. A test that requires the learner actually to speak within some sort of authentic context does.
A concept that is very closely related to content validity is face validity; which asks the question: does the test, on the "face" of it, appear to test what it is designed to test? Face validity is very important from the learner's perspective. To achieve "peak" performance on a test, a learner needs to be convinced that the test is indeed testing what it claims to test. Once I administered a dictation test and a cloze test (see below, for a discussion of cloze tests) as a placement test for an experimental group of learners of English as a second language. Some learners were upset because such tests, on the face of it, did not appear to them to test their true abilities in English. Face validity is almost always perceived in terms of content: if the test samples the actual content of what the learner has achieved or expects to achieve, then face validity will be perceived.
In most human situations we are best tested in something when we are required to perform a sampling of the criterion behavior. But there are a few cases of highly specialized an~ sophisticated testing instruments which do not have high content validity yet are nevertheless valid. Projective personality tests are a prime example. The Thematic Apperception Test and the Rorschach "inkblot" tests have little content validity, yet they have been shown to be accurate in assessing certain types of deviant personality behavior. Other well-known psychological tests have little content validity. The Micro-Momentary Expression test (MME) is a test of empathy that requires subjects to detect facial changes in a participant in a conversation. The more facial changes a testee detects, the more empathic he or she is said to be. Such a test has little con- tent validity, especially if the astute detection of facial changes might be argued to require field independence, which has been shown to correlate negatively with empathy! A test of field independence as a prediction of language success in the classroom is another example of a test with potentially good criterion validity but poor content validity in that the ability to detect an embedded geometric figure bears little direct resemblance to the ability to speak and hear a language.

Construct Validity
A second category of validity that teachers must be aware of in considering language tests is construct validity. One way to look at construct validity is to ask the question: does this test actually tap into the theoretical construct as it has been defined? "Proficiency" is a construct. "Communicative competence" is a construct. "Self-esteem" is a construct. Virtually every theoretical category we have discussed in this book is a theoretical construct. Tests are, in a manner of speaking, operational definitions of such constructs, in that they operationalize the entity that is being measured (see Davidson, Hudson, and Lynch 1985). A teacher, then, needs to be satisfied that a particular test is an adequate definition of a construct. A general proficiency test that consists of, say, grammatical judgment items, reading comprehension items, and listening comprehension items is defining "proficiency" as either consisting of, or being correlated with, those three modes of performance.

In many cases such theoretical constructs are perceived as being adequately defined in the content of the test its elf. But when there is low, or questionable, content validity in a test, it becomes very important for a teacher to be assured of its construct validity. In this instance, validation of the construct has to be empirically demonstrated by means of research that shows that the behavior required of the testee is correlated with the total construct of behaviors in question. For example, the empirical justification for using the MME as a test of empathy is found in research that shows the MME to be correlated with other tests of empathy. The Embedded Figures Test of field independence, in which the testee is to discern smaller geometric shapes within larger and more complex geometric designs, has likewise been related in research studies to other forms of assessing field independence. If you were to claim that such a test is valid for, say, predicting success in a second language, you would be forced to do (or find) research that would empirically demonstrate the correlation of scores on the Embedded Figures Test with scores on other measures of language aptitude. The construct underlying such a claim would theorize that the game cognitive strategies or styles required to perform well on the Embedded Figures Test are also required for successful learning of a second language.

Validity is a complex concept. However, it is indispensable to the teacher's understanding of what makes a "good" test. If in your language teaching you can attend to the practicality, reliability, and validity of tests of language, whether those tests are classroom tests related to a part of a lesson or final exams or proficiency tests, then you are well on the way to making accurate and viable judgments about the competence of the learners with whom with whom you are working.

Kinds of Tests
There are many kinds of tests, each with a specific purpose, a particular criterion to be measured. The purpose of this chapter is not to expound on the many varieties of tests, nor to instruct you on how exactly to devise even a few varieties. However, in examining the general underlying principles of language testing, it is appropriate and necessary to devote a few brief words to outlining some categories of language tests. Your training as a teacher of a particular language should then involve the more specific matters of test construction and interpretation for that language.
Proficiency Tests
If your aim in a test is to tap global competence in a language, then you are, in conventional terminology, testing proficiency. A proficiency test is not intended to be limited to any one course, curriculum, or single skill in the language. Proficiency tests have traditionally consisted of standardized multiple-choice items on grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, aural comprehension, and sometimes of a sample of writing. Such tests often have validity weaknesses: they may confuse oral proficiency with literacy skills, or they may confuse knowledge about a language with ability to use a language; a number of other weaknesses may pertain (Dieterich, Freeman, and Crandall 1979). Proficiency tests need not be defined in such limited terms, however, as we shall see later in this chapter; some great strides have been made toward defining communicative proficiency tests that depart from tradition in radical ways.

A rather typical example of a standardized proficiency test is the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) produced by the Educational Testing Service. It is used by nearly 1000 institutions of higher education in the United States as an indicator of a prospective students ability to undertake academic work in an English medium. The TOEFL consists of the following three sections:

Section 1, Listening Comprehension, measures the ability to understand English as it is spoken in the United States. The oral aspects of the language are stressed. The problems tested include vocabulary that is more frequently used in spoken English, structures that are primarily peculiar to spoken English, and sound and intonation distinctions that have proven to be difficult for nonnative speakers. The stimulus material is recorded in standard American English; the response options are printed in the test books.

Section 2, Structure and Written Expression, measures mastery of important structural and grammatical points in standard written English. The language tested is formal, rather than conversational. The topics of the sentences are of a general academic nature 'so that individuals in specific fields of study or from specific national or linguistic group s have no particular advantage. When topics have a national context, they refer to United States history, culture, art, or literature.

Section 3, Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension, tests the ability to under- stand the meanings and uses of words in written English as well as the ability to understand a variety of reading materials. So that there is no advantage to individuals in any one field of study, the questions based on reading materials do not require outside knowledge of the subject matter.
Proficiency tests sometimes add sections that involve free writing (e.g., ETS's Test of Written English) and/or oral production (e.g., ETS's Test of Spoken English), but these responses diminish the practicality of scoring on a high-volume basis. The TOEFL and virtually every other large-scale proficiency test is machine scorable; when scorers must either read writing samples or judge audiotapes of spoken proficiency, a great deal of administrative cost and time are involved.
Diagnostic and Placement Tests
A diagnostic test is designed to diagnose a particular aspect of a particular language. A diagnostic test in pronunciation might have the purpose of deter- mining which particular phonological features of the language pose difficulty for a learner. Prator's (1972) Diagnostic Passage, for example, is a short written passage that a student of English as a second language reads orally; the teacher or tester then examines a tape recording of that reading against a very detailed checklist of pronunciation errors. The checklist serves to diagnose certain problems in pronunciation. Some proficiency tests can serve as diagnostic tests by isolating and analyzing certain sets of items within the test. An achievement test on a particular module in a curriculum might include a number of items on modal auxiliaries; these particular items could serve to diagnose difficulty on modals.

Certain proficiency tests and diagnostic tests can act in the role of placement tests whose purpose is to place a student in a particular level or section of a language curriculum or school. A placement test typically includes a sampling of material to be covered in the curriculum (that is, it has content validity), and it thereby provides an indication of the point at which the student will find a level or class to be neither too easy nor too difficult but to be appropriately challenging.
Achievement Tests
An achievement test is related directly to classroom lessons, units, or even a total curriculum. Achievement tests are limited to particular material covered in a curriculum within a particular time frame.

Aptitude Tests
Finally, we need to consider the type of test that is given to a person prior to any exposure to the second language, a test that predicts a person's future success. A foreign language aptitude test is designed to measure a person's capacity or general ability to learn a foreign language and to be successful in that undertaking. Aptitude tests are considered to be independent of a particular foreign language, predicting success in the acquisition of any foreign language. Two standardized aptitude tests have been used in the United States - the Modern Language Aptitude Test (Carroll and Sapon 1958) and the Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery (Pimsleur 1966). Both of these are English language tests and require students to perform such tasks as learning numbers, listening, detecting spelling clues and grammatical patterns, and memorizing.

While these two aptitude tests were once rather popular in the foreign language profession, few attempts have been made since then to experiment with new measures of language aptitude (see Parry and Child 1990). Two major issues account for this decline. First, even though the MLAT and the PLAB claimed to measure "language" aptitude, it appears that they simply reflected the general intelligence or academic ability of the student (see Skehan 1989a). At best, they measured ability to perform focused, analytical, field-independent, context-reduced activities that occupy a student in a traditional language classroom. They hardly even began to tap into the kinds of learning strategies and styles that recent research (Oxford 1990b, Ehrman 1990, for example) has shown to be crucial in the acquisition of communicative competence in con- text-embedded situations. As we have already noted in previous chapters, especially in Chapter Five, learners can be successful for a multitude of reasons, many of which are much more related to motivation and determination than to "native" abilities (Lett and O'Mara 1990).
Second, how is one to interpret a language aptitude test? Rarely does an institution have the luxury or freedom to test people before they take a foreign language to counsel certain people out of their decision to do so. So, an aptitude test biases both student and teacher. They are each led to believe that they will be successful or unsuccessful, depending on the aptitude test score, and a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs. It is better for teachers to be optimistic for students, and in the early stages of a student’s process of language learning, to monitor styles and strategies carefully, leading the student toward strategies that will aid in the process of learning and away from those blocking factors that will hinder the process.

The importance of these four different kinds of language tests lies in the fact that different tests serve different purposes. In order to select tests adequately and to interpret their results accurately, teachers need to be aware of the ultimate purpose of the testing context.
Within each category of test above there is a variety of different possible techniques and procedures. These range from objective to subjective techniques, open-ended to structured, multiple-choice to fill-in-the-blank, written to oral. Moreover, language has been viewed traditionally as consisting of four separate skills; therefore language tests have attempted to measure differential ability in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It is not uncommon to be quite proficient in reading a foreign language but not in speaking, or of course for aural comprehension to outstrip speaking ability.

Beyond such considerations, tests of each of the modes of performance can be focused on a continuum of linguistic units, from smaller to larger:, phonology and orthography, words, sentences, and discourse. In interpreting a test it is important to note which linguistic units are being tested. Oral production tests can be tests of overall conversational fluency or pronunciation of a particular subset of phonology, and can take the form of imitation, structured responses, or free responses. Similarly, listening-comprehension tests can concentrate on a particular feature of language or on overall listening for general meaning. Tests of reading can cover the range of language units and can aim to test comprehension of long or short passages, single sentences, or even phrases and words. Writing tests can take on an open-ended form with free composition, or be structured to elicit anything from correct spelling to discourse-level competence.

	Tento článok bol vytlačený zo stránky https://referaty.centrum.sk

Methodology Reader