9/15 Readings

References: "Potential Cultural Resistance to Pedagogical Imports: The Case of CLT in China" - Hu (2002)
and "The end of CLT: a context approach to language teaching" - Bax (2003)

Both of these articles took a critical and problematizing approach to the nature of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in the classroom here in the United States and abroad in China, as in the case of Hu's article. While Hu mainly discussed why the CLT method does not work in China, Bax took a very critical (in fact, pretty sarcastic) approach to describing why CLT method does not work at all and he instead supplemented his own theory of the Context Approach. In my opinion, I do agree with Bax and Hu that CLT should not be considered the end-all-be-all method of language teaching, and Bax makes this quite explicit in his article with the examples of professors all across the world who "say with surprise that somehow many students still manage to learn to speak good English, and wonders how this could be" and "the idea that people could learn English well without CLT seems either to escape her, or to be a heresy too serious to admit" (pg. 279). While I personally feel that he is taking too strong and sarcastic an approach to this article, I see his point. To me, though, doesn't CLT have context included within activities in the language classroom? Yes, in the article we read for Tuesday by Larsen-Freeman I did not see evidence of context being involved in the activities, but I have had foreign language teachers that only ever included context in what we did in class, like role plays with real language and ways to promote strategic competence by circumlocution. If more teachers utilized a combination of CLT and the Context Approach, I think that would be quite effective. It is something that I feel is intuitive to language learning, and I am glad that Bax pointed out the glaring lack there, but I do think there are teachers out there that are doing this. It is not like they are non-existent. Bax suggests that the procedure for the Context Approach would be an "understanding of individual students and their learning needs, wants, styles, and strategies", and later that the "approach will probably be eclectic, in order to meet varied learner needs" (pg. 285). While the eclectic seems like a great idea to me, it intimidates me. As a pre-service teacher, I want to stick to methodologies I know. I do not think that it is realistic to expect first or second year teachers to use this approach, mainly because of external pressures from the school, parents, standards, etc. I think it is an ideal goal to have in mind, however, and I myself strive to achieve it at some point in my career.

I found Hu's article to be fascinating; I thought his approach to academic writing was really approachable and reader friendly to begin with, and I really enjoyed reading all about the Chinese education principles and their roots in Confucianism. The PRC (People's Republic of China) has traditionally, as Hu states, been a combination of "grammar-translation method and audiolingualism...systematic and detailed study of grammar and...painstaking effort to form good verbal habits, an emphasis on written language, and a preference for literary classics" (pg. 93). I think we as Americans have a view of Chinese society as being overall negative and oppressive, mostly because of the USA's disdain of the Communistic view. As a result of this stereotype, we view Chinese education as being too strict and old-fashioned, in a way. Hu describes this in his article about how he feels that the Chinese are being looked down upon for not utilizing CLT in their education system, and this is somehow a big tragedy. CLT pretty much describes everything that the Chinese education system is against: "centered on communicative functions", "effectiveness of communication is sought after rather than merely accuracy or fluency", and "that students should be negotiators, communicators, discoverers, and contributors of knowledge of information" (pg. 95). While these all sound ideal to those of the Western view, myself included, this is the exact opposite of way students are taught. Student in PRC are expected to be sponges, for lack of a better metaphor. They have "a deep reverence for education" (pg. 96), and they are expected to listen to absorb and repeat it back to the teacher and the teacher gives them explicit feedback and error correction. I know I cringed as I read it, and I could not help feeling like it sounded antiquated and reminded me of a classroom in the 1950's. I put my feelings aside and realized that this attitude towards education has produced impressive results. I know a few Chinese students personally, and they are so hard-working it is unbelievable. They learn English so fast! I feel like they are further ahead with their English skills than I am with Spanish in a shorter amount of time. Chinese students are used to a system that "discourages individuality, fulfillment of personal needs, and self-expression - issues that are given priority in the CLT classroom" (pg. 97). To an American, this is again quite cringe-worthy. We have grown up in a country that emphasizes uniqueness and a sort of feeling of superiority to other education systems, even though I would like to point out that we produce abysmal standardized test scores in comparison to Asian countries. Obviously, this feeling of community in the Chinese education system reflects the values of the Communistic society. I think it is important as a future Spanish/ESL to put aside our own feelings about other governments or societies and try to imagine where that student is coming from. They are going to come here and feel like a fish out of water already only to go into the classroom where they know they will excel, and be totally blindsided by the opposite values of education. I cannot imagine that feeling at all. I think we should be aware of this and do our absolute best to be sympathetic to their needs and offer them some semblance of what they are used to in order to help them assimilate better to the school environment.