Teaching Oregon Native Languages

Chapter Five: Best Practices in Language Teaching

117 Chapter Five Best Practices in Language Teaching Juan Antonio Trujillo Introduction This chapter approaches language-revitalization efforts from an applied-linguistics perspective. Applied linguistics is an academic field of study in which researchers explore ways that linguistic theory can help address real-world concerns. Among the issues addressed by applied linguists are second language acquisition and the preservation of ancestral languages. It is an interdisciplinary field that incorporates resources from other areas as needed, drawing frequently on educational theory and technology. There has often been a reluctance on the part of tribal language and culture program directors to spend time reading the research published by applied linguists in journals and books. It is true that much of the work done by linguists is presented in a technical format that seems very detached and mechanical to people who experience language loss on a more visceral, emotional level. Unfortunately, language loss is not a limited phenomenon. James Crawford, executive director of the NationalAssociation for Bilingual Education, speaks of a “worldwide crisis,” and cites figures indicating that as many as half of the world’s six thousand languages are at serious risk.1 The body of knowledge that has been developed over the years by applied linguists includes the experiences of colonized people all over the world who are going through the same struggles as the tribes in Oregon. We will begin with an overview of developments in the recent history of language education, some thoughts about current educational philosophy, and a discussion of the potential role of national proficiency-oriented content standards in programs designed for learners of indigenous languages. Finally, we will move beyond the strictly educational aspects of applied linguistics in order to examine some additional insights that language theory can offer to individual learners, language instructors, and program planners. The Changing Scope of Language Teaching For many years, language programs in schools and universities focused on teaching vocabulary lists and explaining grammar 118 Chapter Five structures. Teachers expected students to be able to translate classical literary texts, analyze sentences, and reproduce vocabulary lists. Very little emphasis was placed on being able to create original sentences or engage in real communication with native speakers of the language being learned. In fact, before the twentieth century, schools seldom had instruction in modern languages available at all, preferring classical Latin and Greek. It was not until the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War that U.S. government agencies fully recognized the advantages that could be gained by having large numbers of people in diplomatic andmilitaryservicewhowerecapableofengaginginfluentinteraction with people anywhere there was a perceived strategic interest. This shift in priorities, together with advances in the field of educational psychology, led to many more languages being offered for study and to the development of language-teaching approaches centered on communicative proficiency rather than grammar and translation. Although some rather repetitive activities remained popular (pattern drills, memorization of dialogues, etc.), class time was much more clearly devoted to activities that experts of one persuasion or another believed would lead to an ability to understand and create authentic language. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, linguistics was emerging as an important academic discipline inAmerican universities. Perhaps most prominent among the linguists of that period was Noam Chomsky,2 whose transformational model shifted the attention of American linguists away from historical studies and toward research into how language itself functions at a single moment in time. However, Chomsky’s work continued to focus on grammar. Among the first scholars to reject the narrow, grammar-centric approach to language study was Dell Hymes, a linguistic anthropologist who spent many years working with Oregon’s indigenous-language communities. Recognizing that knowing when to say something is just as important as knowing how to say it, Hymes proposed a view of language that takes into account a number of social or cultural variables. Hymes referred to the combination of grammatical knowledge and cultural understanding needed to communicate effectively as communicative competence.3 Michael Canale and Merrill Swain later described how the notion of communicativecompetenceworksinthesecond-languageclassroom.4 They identified four main components: 1) grammatical competence, or command of the rules of language; 2) sociolinguistic competence, or understanding of the social dimensions of communication; 3) Best Practices in Language Teaching 119 discourse competence, or the ability to put ideas into a cohesive form; and 4) strategic competence, or proficiency with verbal and nonverbal...