TESOL QUARTERLY

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TESOL QUARTERLY CONTENTS To print, select PDF page nos. in parentheses

ARTICLES The Concept of Method, Interested Knowledge, and the 589 Politics of Language Teaching Alastair Pennycook 619 Approaches to Faculty Evaluation for ESL Martha C. Pennington and Aileen L. Young 647 Metacognitive Strategy Training for ESL Reading Patricia L. Carrell, Becky G. Pharis, and Joseph C. Liberto

REVIEWS Broken Promises: Reading Instruction in 679 Twentieth-Century America

Patrick Shannon Reviewed by James W. Tollefson Contemporary World Issues: An Interactive Approach 682 to Reading and Writing

Richard L. Light and Fan Lan-Ying Reviewed by Nancy Rennau Tumposky

BOOK NOTICES

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(14-43) (44-71) (72-103)

Volume 23, Number 4 ❑ December 1989

BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIES Rote Learning, Attitudes, and Abilities: A Comparison 695 of Japanese and American Students Thomas Tinkham THE FORUM Replication in Applied Linguistics Research Terry Santos

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703 Information for Contributors Editorial Policy General Information for Authors Publications Received 707 Publications Available from the TESOL Central Office 736 TESOL Membership Application

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Volume 23, Number 4 ❑ December 1989

A Journal for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and of Standard English as a Second Dialect

Editor SANDRA SILBERSTEIN, University of Washington

Brief Reports and Summaries Editor GAIL WEINSTEIN—SHR, Temple University Assistant Editor LINDA STOLFI, University of Washington Editorial Assistant MAUREEN P. PHILLIPS, University of Washington

Editorial Advisory Board Elsa Auerbach University of Massachusetts at Boston Margie S. Berns Purdue University James D. Brown University of Hawaii at Manoa Ruth Larimer Cathcart Monterey Institute of International Studies Graham Crookes University of Hawaii at Manoa Patricia A. Dunkel The Pennsylvania State University Joan Eisterhold Carson Georgia State University Liz Hamp-Lyons University of Michigan

Elliot L. Judd University of Illinois at Chicago Ilona Leki University of Tennessee Mary McGroarty Northern Arizona University James W. Tollefson University of Washington Leo van Lier Monterey Institute of International Studies Lise Winer Southern Illinois University Vivian Zamel University of Massachusetts at Boston

Additional Readers Ulla Connor, Roberta G. Abraham, Diane Larsen-Freeman, Susan Gass, Fred Genesee, Ann M. Johns, Donna M. Johnson, Patsy Lightbown, William Grabe, Andrew F. Siegel, Ruth Spack, Evan Watkins

Credits Advertising arranged by Helen Kornblum, TESOL Central Office, Alexandria, Virginia Typesetting, printing, and binding by Pantagraph Printing, Bloomington, Illinois Design by Chuck Thayer Advertising, San Francisco, California

TESOL QUARTERLY Editor's Note ■ This issue inaugurates the editorial residency of the TESOL Quarterly at the University of Washington. I thank the following administrators for providing essential resources: Richard J. Dunn, English Department Chair, and Susan Williams, Department Administrator; Joe G. Norman, Jr., Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; Gene L. Woodruff, Dean of the Graduate School; and Vice-Provost Richard L. Lorenzen. Institutional support for an academic journal makes possible the vital dialogue that nourishes a field. I am fortunate that Gail Weinstein-Shr has accepted my invitation to serve as Brief Reports and Summaries Editor. Gail’s experience spans most contexts in which adults study English. She is currently a teacher trainer and researcher at Temple University, best known for her writing on language in community development, and for her ethnographic research on literacy among Southeast Asian refugees. Gail looks forward to submissions from the readership that reflect our geographic and professional diversity. It is my pleasure to introduce Assistant Editor, Linda Stolfi. Linda comes to the Quarterly with a BA in English, and an MS in molecular biology. She is a highly skilled editor whose extensive training in editing and technical writing, and whose experience on other professional journals make her invaluable in the editorial process. I thank Polly Ulichny for her work on Reviews and Book Notices during this transition period. I am especially grateful to Stephen J. Gaies for his gracious assistance and valued counsel. Preceding me as Editor during the past five years, Stephen has served with distinction, producing a professional journal of the highest quality. I know the readership joins me in thanking Stephen for his signal contribution, and in wishing him well as he continues his many activities in the service of English language teaching. Finally, readers will note that this issue and the next are slightly shorter than usual. The normal production and mailing schedules of the Quarterly currently result in delivery to our readers some weeks after the cover date. In order to reestablish a realistic production schedule, we have elected to publish two shorter issues. 581

In this Issue The two articles that open this issue highlight the vital diversity of perspectives within our field. The first presents a critique of the concept of Method, arguing that notions of professional expertise serve to disenfranchise teachers. The second, representing a potentially divergent perspective, outlines approaches to teacher evaluation. It seems to this reader that teacher evaluation would not be a high priority from a perspective that focuses on the dangers to teachers of intervention from above and abroad. In contrast, from a perspective that views teacher evaluation as a keystone to professional credibility and program viability, teacher accountability is a central issue. These two thoughtful discussions provoke us to examine difficult and important questions. The last article in this issue contributes to research directions in reading instruction.

• Alastair Pennycook begins with the premises that all education is political, and that all knowledge is “interested,” that is, reflects the interests of some over others. Examining the concept of Method in second language education, he argues that “both a historical analysis and an investigation of its current use reveal little conceptual coherence.” This analysis leads Pennycook to explore the role of teaching theory as a mediator of power within an educational hierarchy. The paper identifies Method as a prescriptive concept that reinforces inequalities between “on the one hand, predominantly male academics and, on the other, female teachers and language classrooms on the international power periphery.” Pennycook concludes, “Rather than trying to understand our practice according to some form of totalizing or universal discourse, we need to recognize the complexities of language teaching and its contexts, and strive to validate other, local forms of knowledge about language teaching.”

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Martha Pennington and Aileen Young argue that “the viability of a profession rests on the credibility of its practices and its practitioners. Thus it is the responsibility of ESL teacher educators and other members of the TESOL profession to ensure basic standards of instructional quality.” To this end, Pennington and Young review the educational research on seven common types of faculty evaluation, assessing each in terms of its appropriateness to an ESL context and the potential pitfalls in its application. They outline a developmental orientation to faculty evaluation in which different combinations of methods are used at different stages of a teacher’s career. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations designed to mitigate deficiencies identified in the literature review. Patricia Carrell, Becky Pharis, and Joseph Liberto contribute to the developing literature on metacognition (literally, cognition of cognition). This area of research addresses the extent to which learners are aware, or can be made aware, of their cognitive strategies. The TESOL QUARTERLY

authors note the literature on strategy training that suggests that less competent learners can benefit from training in strategies evidenced by more successful learners. Carrell, Pharis, and Liberto test this finding in the context of second language reading. Their research suggests that metacognitive strategy training (in this case, training in semantic mapping or in the experience-text-relationship method) enhances second language reading comprehension; the effectiveness of one type of training over another seems to depend on the way reading is measured. Moreover, the effectiveness of the training seems to be related to the learning styles of the students. Also in this issue: • Reviews: James Tollefson reviews Patrick Shannon’s critical examination of commercial reading materials, Broken Promises: Reading Instruction in Twentieth-Century America, and Nancy Rennau Tumposky reviews Contemporary World Issues: An Interactive Approach to Reading and Writing by Richard L. Light and Fan Lan-Ying. • Book Notices • Brief Reports and Summaries: Thomas Tinkham reports the findings of a study comparing Japanese and American students’ attitudes toward rote learning, and their performance on rote learning tasks. • The Forum: Noting the dearth of replicated studies in applied linguistics, Terry Santos argues that replication is “necessary to advance the field,” and offers observations on designing and implementing such studies. Interestingly, studies appearing in this issue of the TESOL Quarterly (Carrell, Pharis, and Liberto) and the next (Jonz) include reports of replications. Sandra Silberstein

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TESOL QUARTERLY, Vol. 23, No. 4, December 1989

The Concept of Method, Interested Knowledge, and the Politics of Language Teaching ALASTAIR PENNYCOOK Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Examining the concept of Method in second language education, this paper argues that both a historical analysis and an investigation of its current use reveal little conceptual coherence. Ultimately, the term seems to obfuscate more than to clarify our understanding of language teaching. While this may seem at first a minor quibble over terminology, there are in fact far more serious implications. By relating the role of teaching theory to more general concerns about the production of interested knowledge and the politics of language teaching, this paper argues that Method is a prescriptive concept that articulates a positivist, progressivist, and patriarchal understanding of teaching and plays an important role in maintaining inequities between, on the one hand, predominantly male academics and, on the other, female teachers and language classrooms on the international power periphery.

It is not uncommon in texts on language teaching to find a discussion of methods prefaced with the phrase “so-called” (e.g., H. D. Brown, 1980, p. 240), suggesting a certain skepticism toward this concept. This suspicion can be found amongst academics who have looked closely at the idea of teaching methods and found it wanting, and amongst teachers who feel frustration at being told how to teach, sensing that there is little concordance between what the concept purports to describe and what is actually happening in their classrooms. In particular, many teachers in an EFL context question the usefulness of supposed methods to their own teaching contexts and resent their imposition by “experts” from abroad. And yet, despite this dissatisfaction, the concept of Method continues to be used by many of those involved in teacher education. In this paper, I shall try to show not only why there is very good reason to be skeptical about methods, but also to show that the concept 589

reflects a particular view of the world and is articulated in the interests of unequal power relationships. Of particular concern will be the hierarchical nature of the relationship between academic theorizing and teaching practice, both within and beyond the confines of North American or European life. Second Language Education (SLE) is involved in a complex nexus of social, cultural, economic, and political relationships that involve students, teachers, and theorists in differential positions of power. I hope the following discussion will show that we must view critically all of the standard orthodoxies of TESOL and investigate the interests served by such orthodoxies.

INTERESTED KNOWLEDGE AND THE POLITICS OF SECOND LANGUAGE EDUCATION Let me start by making two very basic claims that are central to the arguments of this article: First, that all education is political, and second, that all knowledge is “interested.” To say that language teaching is in some sense political would seem uncontroversial since it is clear that many decisions about what gets taught, to whom, how, when, and where, are made at high levels of the political ‘ hierarchy. Thus a number of models of factors involved in language teaching reflect the fact that we must always take into account the sociopolitical context of education (see, for example, Mackey, 1970; Strevens, 1977). Here, however, I would like to expand this notion of the political from the narrower concerns of governmental or administrative decision-making to include all societal relationships of power. Thus, what is being argued here is that we should avoid reducing the political either to the liberal emphasis on rules and administration or to the conservative emphasis on politics as a private enterprise in defense of a free-market economy and individualist rights and freedom (Giroux, 1988, p. 29). Rather, we must see the political as involving all relationships within a society, as concerned with all the fundamental inequalities, particularly those based in class, race, and gender differences. Among others, Foucault (1980) argues that power is not simply something possessed by the dominant group, nor is it a question of prohibition and punishment; rather, power is coextensive with the social body. Relations of power are interwoven with other kinds of relations for which they play both a conditioned and a conditioning role (p. 142). In this view, education is fundamentally political since it is constantly involved in the (re)production of social and cultural inequalities (both within and between nations), and of particular 590

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forms of culture and knowledge. Significantly, in the United States and a number of other Western countries, there has been a retreat from this view of education as political. As Giroux (1983) points out, the move in the early 20th century toward scientific management of the curriculum signaled a move away from viewing the school as a political site. Thus, both the conservative view that overtly described schools as training grounds for promoting obedience, punctuality, silence, and industry, and the more radical views of Dewey and the social reconstructionists, that saw the school as a site of democracy and social change, became submerged under a view of education as a rational and technical operation. As Giroux (1983) explains: This philosophical shift in the purpose and function of schooling not only abstracted schools from the context of the wider society, it also ushered in a mode of rationality that relegated the political nature of schooling to the anteroom of educational theory and practice. Citizenship education became entwined in a “culture of positivism,” one that displayed little interest in the ways in which schools acted as agents of social and cultural reproduction in a society marked by significant inequities in wealth, power, and privilege. (p. 170) The significance of seeing the school as a site of political struggle lies in the need to recognize that those who wish to deny the political nature of schooling are clearly articulating an ideological position in favor of the status quo. Anyone who holds an alternative view of society must first recognize this before looking at the possibilities for producing change in and through the educational system. Paulo Freire, who has probably done more than any other educator in the service of the disenfranchised, points out the ideological implications in the U.S. of this retreat from the political: “It is necessary to negate the political nature of pedagogy to give the superficial appearance that education serves everyone, thus assuring that it continues to function in the interest of the dominant class” (Freire & Macedo, 1987, p. 122). While my argument thus far has been concerned with the politics of all forms of education, I would suggest that these arguments are especially relevant to second language education, since it is centered around the highly political concept of a language (langue) and is bound up in the contentious issues of bilingualism, minority education, and internationalism. Again, some might be willing to admit an element of the political in such “sociolinguistic” areas as language planning, but I would argue that since linguistics is forced to work with a concept that is inherently political, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that linguistics itself is political. There has, METHOD, INTERESTED KNOWLEDGE, AND POLITICS

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however, been a strong tendency to overlook the political dimensions of the concept of language, ignoring the intimate connections between language and the development of the nation state, and the many implications of distinctions between language and dialect. An interesting example of the political implications of the notion of a language and a grammar can be found in Illich’s (1981) account of the presentation of the first Castilian grammar to Queen Isabella at the end of the 15th century. Its author, Nebrija, argued that this new grammar would be a crucial tool in the colonization both of the subjects already within the kingdom and of those in the new lands being discovered. Of fundamental importance was a standardized language for governance and control of the people, a language which, Nebrija argued, would limit the current diversified reading and allow for much stronger centralized control over books. This and the other European grammars were to play a crucial role in the formation of the modern state and its citizens as they were weaned away from the Church. The notion of a language and a grammar during this period came to take on immense political significance. As R. Harris (1987) argues, “the European post-Renaissance concept of ‘a language’ was from the outset a political concept, and the ‘grammar of a language’ no less so. To insist on the worldwide imposition of these concepts as providing the only scientific approach to linguistic inquiry is, at the very least, to confuse science with cultural imperialism” (p. 1373). There appears to be a strong parallel, then, between attempts to deal with education and language without acknowledging the political. It is important, therefore, to recognize the ahistorical and apolitical stance taken by many linguists as once again an ideological position. It is dangerous to assume, as does Newmeyer (1986), a connection between structuralism and egalitarianism, since as Mey (1985) argues, concepts of equality and democracy in linguistic analysis can easily become tools of linguistic manipulation: Abstract considerations of “uniform structures” and general postulates about “equal rights” of dialect speakers can easily lead the way to potentially manipulatory notions about “linguistic democracy” and similar things. . . . Linguistic models, no matter how innocent and purely theoretical they may seem to be, not only have distinct economical, social, and political presuppositions, but also consequences. . . . The veil of linguistic manipulation that is drawn across the consciousness of the underprivileged can only hide, not abolish, the existing state of social inequality. (p. 26) 592

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SLE, then, is inscribed in a complex constellation of educational and linguistic relationships that must be considered in any understanding of the context of language teaching. In the English programs run by the U.S. for refugees in camps in Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia before their immigration to the U. S., for example, Tollefson (1988) suggests that there is a covert policy to ensure that immigrants will have enough English to perform adequately in minimum-wage jobs while avoiding any welfare dependency, yet not enough to move beyond these levels of employment: The RPCs [Refugee Processing Centers], despite their declared aims, can be expected to continue to limit refugees’ improvement in English language proficiency, capacity for cultural adaptation, and preemployment skills, thereby contributing to the covert goal of ensuring that most refugees will only be able to compete effectively for minimum-wage employment. (p. 39). With respect to bilingual education in the U. S., Cummins (1989) argues that the “overwhelmingly consistent pattern” in the research data clearly showing the efficacy of bilingual programs has been consistently ignored because its acknowledgment would “effectively eliminate the psychoeducational legitimization for eradicating minority children’s language and culture” (1989, p. 88). Thus, the reality of domination over minorities could no longer be obscured by appeal to the rhetoric of inequality if it were not for the complicity of academics making recommendations “that are absolutely devoid of empirical evidence and logical coherence” (1989, pp. 88-89). Cummins suggests that many academics are involved in a disinformation campaign that helps to maintain the “covert racism and psychological violence to which dominated minority students are still subjected” (1989, pp. 127-128) and to preserve the political status quo that is being threatened by the changing demographics with the increasing numbers of Spanishspeaking peoples in the U.S. A similarly intimate relationship between language, language teaching, and power can be seen in the spread of the English language around the world, or as Phillipson (1988) calls it, “the international linguistic hegemony of English. ” “Linguicism” (cf. racism, sexism, classism), Phillipson argues, has operated during both the colonial and the neocolonial eras to further increase the dependence and subjugation of the Third World. Cooke (1988) and Judd (1983) see the problems posed by the spread of English to be the loss of indigenous languages and the maintenance of social elites. Other writers have emphasized the cultural content that METHOD, INTERESTED KNOWLEDGE, AND POLITICS

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English brings with it: “The spread of English went parallel with the spread of the culture of international business and technological standardization. From there, the jump towards the standardization of international thought becomes easy to make” (Ndebele, 1987, p. 4). As Peirce (1989) argues, we must go beyond views of language as “neutral,” since “English, like all other languages, is . . . a site of struggle over meaning, access, and power” (p. 405). The role of language teaching in this process has received little criticism in the West, so that “ELT is largely perceived . . . as being a technical business which is unconnected with cultural imperialism, linguicism, or the global power structure which maintains the Periphery in a state of dependence on the Centre” (Phillipson, 1988, p. 348). Although this outline of the political in language teaching has been far too brief to give credit to a number of extremely important issues, it has, I hope, suggested the way in which language and language teaching are always inscribed in relations of power, and are therefore political issues. I now turn to the second of the basic issues that frame this discussion: the interested nature of knowledge. In recent years, a growing number of questions have been raised about the paradigms and ideologies of the social sciences. Doubts have arisen about some of their most basic tenets, especially the predominant positivist (or scientist) l orientation, that is the tendency of the social sciences to model themselves after the physical sciences through use of the empirical-analytic approach, thus claiming to arrive at objectivity through the development of standardized, quantitative techniques of analysis. As Popkewitz (1984) suggests, this has led in educational research to the superimposition of technique over theory and therefore to the overadherence to certain techniques of investigation and the narrowing of the scope of theory. Closely connected to claims that the knowledge thereby produced is neutral and objective has been the removal of the personal and the political from the investigation of human issues. Generally speaking—and these same issues emerged from the preceding discussion of education and linguistics—there has been a tendency to validate only one type of knowledge, to affirm that an ahistorical and apolitical approach is more scientifically sound, and to believe in objectivity (in an objective/ subjective dichotomy), in the efficacy of investigative procedures that emphasize quantification and prediction, in the linearly progressive cumulation of knowledge, and in the universal applicability of human rationality. 1 For

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a discussion of these terms, see Williams (1976).

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This position has received strong criticism, however, from a diversity of sources. Critical theorists (e.g., Habermas, 1984; Marcuse, 1964), feminists2 (e.g., Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Grimshaw, 1986; Harding, 1986; Keller, 1985; de Lauretis, 1986), Third World writers (e.g., Kothari, 1987; Nandy, 1983), postmodernists (e.g., Hebdige, 1986; Lyotard, 1984), philosophers of science (e.g., Feyerabend, 1988; Kuhn, 1970), anthropologists (e. g., Clifford, 1988), sociologists and philosophers of education (e. g., K. Harris, 1979), and critical pedagogues (e. g., Apple, 1986; Giroux, 1988; Giroux & McLaren, 1989; Simon, 1984, 1987) have all, from their different viewpoints, raised fundamental questions about this view of knowledge: They argue that all knowledge is produced within a particular configuration of social, cultural, economic, political, and historical circumstances and therefore always both reflects and helps to (re)produce those conditions. Furthermore, since all claims to knowledge represent the interests of certain individuals or groups, we must always see knowledge as interested. These criticisms all address the problems of the dominance of one particular type of knowledge (rational-purposive or scientifictechnological), its colonization of other forms of knowledge, and its link to patriarchal, positivist, and progressivist modes of thought. Most important, then, is the need to acknowledge the fact that “all knowledge claims are ‘interested’ and are modes of intelligibility grounded in the struggles, tensions, and inequalities that mark history’s bequest to the present” (Simon, 1984, p. 381). As Popkewitz (1984) and Silva and Slaughter (1984) have shown, furthermore, we need to examine carefully the role of social scientists as it has been historically constituted, since an analysis of their relationship to society and political structures suggests that “contemporary American university-based social science tends to support vested political economic interests” (Silva & Slaughter, 1984, p. 5). For the purpose of our discussion here, the central issues are the roles of positivism and patriarchy, the claims to universality, objectivity, and truth, and the belief in inherent progress, within the domains of linguistics and applied linguistics. What is being argued, then, is that the fundamental challenges being made to the social sciences (questioning the paradigms of research, the roles of intellectuals, and the nature of the knowledge produced) need to be addressed by applied linguists, since they raise serious doubts about TESOL, especially regarding the relationship between the 2 These categories are not, of course, mutually exclusive. One may be both a feminist and philosopher of science, or both a Third World writer and an anthropologist, for example. This list is also but a tiny selection of these areas of work.

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production of academic knowledge and teaching practice, and between central and peripheral institutions in an international context. A number of areas requiring reexamination suggest themselves: an understanding of education and language as fundamentally political; a recognition of the social, cultural, economic, and political forces that inform the problematics and research paradigms of such areas as second language acquisition (for some suggestive work here, see Bourne, 1988; Nayar, 1989); acknowledgment of the serious implications, both pedagogically and politically, of our current use of such concepts as “communicative competence” (see Bourne, 1988; and Peirce’s [1989] distinction between what is normatively appropriate and what is politically desirable); an understanding of the implications of the current tendency to trivialize content in SLE (see Brumfit, 1985; Mukherjee, 1986); and an examination of the concept of Method (which will be discussed at some length in this paper). I have argued, then, that we must emphasize the political in SLE and always look critically at the interests involved in the production of different types of knowledge. As suggested in the introduction, these issues need to be examined carefully if any form of reciprocal relationship is to be developed between academics and teachers in the West, and between the West and other parts of the world. Yet herein lies a major problem, for as Clarke and Silberstein (1988) point out with respect to relationships between academics and teachers, and as others (e. g., Altbach, 1981) have indicated concerning international relations in general, rather than a reciprocal relationship, there in fact exists a one-way flow of prescriptivist knowledge. The knowledge produced in the central academic institutions is legitimated through a series of political relationships that privilege it over other possible forms of knowledge. Since my principal concern here is the connection between academics and teachers, in the next section I shall consider in some depth the question of the concept of Method. There are a number of problems with the relationship between the knowledge produced in applied linguistics and that produced through classroom practice—as Gregg (1986) points out, much of second language acquisition theory has been unhelpfully antiteacher—but it is in the area of methods that I feel these issues are in most need of being addressed. METHODS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING In this section, I closely examine the concept of Method in language teaching, with a view to showing how the dominance of 596

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this notion in the conceptualization of teaching has diminished rather than enhanced our understanding of language teaching. I argue further that we need to investigate the interests served by the construction of this concept. Ideally, it would be useful to attempt a genealogy of Method, but this is clearly beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, some general comments may be useful to set this discussion in a broader context. Feyerabend (e.g., 1988) has examined and criticized at some length what he sees as the modern obsession with Method in the natural sciences, tracing it back to a Cartesian legacy. His attack on Method focuses principally on the serious consequences that it has in limiting the potential of scientific investigation. Similarly, for political science, Wolin (1972) argues that Method “avoids fundamental criticism and fundamental commitment” and that far from being an innocent, epistemological, neutral idea, it is a “proposal for shaping the mind” (pp. 23, 38). It is important, then, that we see the concept of Method as a product of early scientism, an attempt to delineate modes of inquiry and define the problematic. While this tendency to use Method has presumably served a purpose in the investigation of scientific questions, it has also tended to limit the scope of investigation and prescribe the problematic. With regard to language teaching, Stern (1983) has suggested that there is a “fundamental weakness” in the concept of Method. His suggestion, however, that the “conviction has gradually spread that language teaching cannot be satisfactorily conceptualized in terms of teaching method alone” (p. 474) has not been supported in light of the continuing emphasis on methods. Indeed, as Stern himself noted later, in a review of Oller and Richard-Amato’s (1983) Methods that Work, “this century-old obsession” was far from dead: “One of the most extraordinary and in some ways totally unexpected phenomena in the recent history of language teaching has been the ‘method boom’ of the seventies” (Stern, 1985, p. 249). He goes on to argue that “the prolonged preoccupation with the new methods, useful as it has been to widen our horizon, is becoming increasingly unproductive and misguided” (p. 251). Stern’s hope that the last great method debate (audiolingualism vs. cognitive code) was over seems to have been unrealized, given its central role in TESOL orthodoxy and the extent to which the concept of Method is interested knowledge. It is part of this orthodoxy (see, e.g., H. D. Brown, 1980; Clarke, 1982; LarsenFreeman, 1986; McArthur, 1983; Richards & Rodgers, 1986) that there has been a series of language teaching methods over the years, each being succeeded by a better one until we reach the present. Here we find (a) the best method (or approach) to date, (b) a METHOD> INTERESTED KNOWLEDGE, AND POLITICS

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proliferation of new and exciting methods from which to choose, and (c) the promise of even better things to come. As I hope to show, however, the epistemological presumptiveness of this orthodoxy has serious consequences for language teaching and is supported neither by a diachronic nor synchronic analysis of language teaching. As I suggested earlier, positivist and progressivist thought naturally tends to exclude or to make a very particular reading of history, and so it is to a historical overview that we shall now turn. In the preface to his history of language teaching, Kelly (1969) suggests that “nobody really knows what is new or old in presentday language teaching procedures. There has been a vague feeling that modern experts have spent their time in discovering what other men [sic] have forgotten” (p. ix). One thing that emerges from Kelly’s comprehensive study is a pattern of cyclical change: The Classical, Renaissance, and Modern periods have been marked by an emphasis on oral communication, while the Middle Ages and Enlightenment placed much more emphasis on analysis of the written text. This cyclic revolution, Kelly argues, is largely based on “alternation between the social and philosophical aims of language teaching with the literary aim acting as a balance” (p. 399). It becomes evident that the goals and therefore the procedures of language teaching closely reflect the social, political, cultural, and intellectual climate of the times. The entrenchment of learning in the monastery of the Middle Ages, with the goal of preserving Latin as the language of religion and scholarship, clearly led to a strong emphasis on the text and its analysis. The sudden influx of new ideas and spread of European scholarship during the Renaissance brought about a swing toward a much more oral-based approach. The Enlightenment emphasis on rational thought and coherent theorizing brought about an increased emphasis on formal and rulebased study that appears to have coexisted with other forms until a strong drive at the end of the 19th century once again moved the spoken language to the fore. Lambley’s (1920) study of the teaching of French in England during Tudor and Stuart times clearly demonstrates how the language taught and the nature of the teaching were affected by sociopolitical changes. In the 15th century, “fluency in speaking French was the chief need of the classes of society in which the demand for instruction was greatest. Correctness in detail was only of secondary importance, and grammar, though desirable, was not considered indispensable” (pp. 27-28). Texts from this period contained dialogues for giving directions, obtaining lodging at inns, and buying and selling goods; they were clearly aimed at providing 598

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functional oral skills for merchants (some also included models for writing letters, bills, and other such documents). This pragmatic orientation is clearly spelled out by Caxton in an introduction to a text he published around 1483: “Who this booke shall wylle lerne/ May well enterprise/ Marchandise fro one land to another,/ And to know many wares/ Which to him shall be good to be bought/ Or sold for rich to become” (cited in Lambley, 1920, p. 43). French in the Tudor period, although needed particularly by courtiers and merchants, was also used by travelers and soldiers. The Counter Reformation in late 16th century France brought, on the one hand, a body of native-speaker teachers to England and, on the other, created a need for instruction in English as a second language (Howatt, 1983). In the English teaching of this period, the use of dialogues and situational teaching were common, and Lambley shows that many of the issues debated today were also hotly argued in the late 16th and early 17th centuries: rule-based learning as opposed to learning through practice, formal study as opposed to informal use. What is most striking in these histories is the constant recurrence of the same teaching techniques and debates about teaching. Arguments for the inductive teaching of grammar, for example, were made by Saint Augustine in the 4th century, Francis Bacon in the 17th century, and Henry Sweet in the early 19th century (Kelly, 1969, pp. 35-38; Howatt, 1984b, p. 280). In 1415, a treatise entitled Femina argued that teaching should follow the natural model provided by mothers with their children (Lambley, 1920), an argument that constantly reappears over the centuries (Kelly, 1969, pp. 34-43). Substitution tables, realia, language games, dialogues, and many other parts of the modern scene have been around for centuries. Kelly (1969) concludes that the “total corpus of ideas accessible to language teachers has not changed basically in 2,000 years” (p. 363). A slightly more detailed look at the teaching principles advocated by Comenius (1592-1670) should illustrate this point more clearly.3 Not only are the enlightened views of Comenius’ general educational principles—such as universal education and intercurricular teaching—familiar points of educational debate today, but so too are many of his more practical suggestions. In the “sensory principle,” for example, Comenius chides teachers for lecturing too much rather than letting children learn through the direct experience of their senses. The presentation of each new object 3 The

following section on Comenius is based principally on Caravolas (1984). The translations from the French are my own.


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must be linked to the appropriate sense: As he wrote in 1651, “In our school we follow the rule that everything one needs to know about things should be taught with the help of the things themselves, that is to say that as far as possible, the real objects or pictures of them should be presented so that they can be seen, touched, heard, tasted, etc.” (Caravolas, 1984, p. 88). He continually stresses the dictum “you learn by doing” (p. 220). His “pleasure principle” stresses the importance of affect, of motivation, and of interesting activity in the classroom. Classrooms, he suggests, should be “workshops full of ardent activity” (p. 94). He outlines seven principles to improve student motivation: (a) The teacher should be lively and interesting, (b) presentations should be brief, (c) examples should be concrete, (d) students should always be active, (e) activities must be useful and relevant, (f) there should be variety in every class, and (g) games should be used. Other suggestions included students working together and sometimes taking the role of the teacher; the integration of language teaching with other parts of the curriculum as part of an interdisciplinary approach; and the use of dialogues and role plays or sketches in language teaching. Clearly, many of these ideas would find support today, especially the emphasis on experiential learning, inductive presentation, motivational techniques, and the use of games and role plays. It seems evident from these historical surveys that while there certainly are trends and shifts in language teaching, these tend to be a reordering of the same basic options, and to reflect the social, cultural, political, and philosophical environment. This view does not emerge in many discussions of language teaching; overlooked is the fact that much is not as new as is claimed. On this process of forgetting, Caravolas (1984) has this to say: “It should be recognized that this forgetfulness is not always innocent. These days language teaching has become a colossal enterprise which, like any other industry, defends both its overt and covert interests by any means possible, in the name of profit and glory” (p. 210). Despite the clear implications of the historical works cited, the reading of history by a number of other authors is quite different and appears to support quite different interests. Other historical surveys tend not to present the cyclical nature of change that Kelly outlines, preferring a much more linear model. While Titone (1968, pp. 1-2) acknowledges that the “so-called ‘traditional method’ ” in language teaching is neither traditional nor classical but very recent, he goes on to describe the period of its use (dating from the beginning of the 19th century) as a “deviation [emphasis added] in teaching method.” He then argues that “this deviation can most probably be explained by the inevitable lack of 600

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linguistic and psychological knowledge on the part of the language teachers in those days; and the traditional inertia or routineaddiction of the school practitioners, who did not care for change or improvement of their teaching habits.” This is clearly a very different argument from the ones discussed earlier Titone is suggesting that there is a definite direction in which language teaching has progressed, apart from the unfortunate deviation. Interestingly, for Titone writing in the mid-1960s, this progress had led to the development of audiolingualism, a proposition at which the modern reader can wrily smile, secure in the knowledge that true progress has in fact led to communicative language teaching, audiolingualism being but a slight deviation from that true path. Titone, then, makes a clearly positivist and progressivist argument: We have continued to make progress in a cumulative fashion toward the present day by the application of scientific principles to teaching. While making passing reference to the work of Kelly and others, the historical introduction to Richards and Rodgers’ (1986) influential book4 on methods reflects the positivist and progressivist work of Titone far more than it does a historicist orientation. Thus, a historical view emerges suggesting that although oral approaches were originally employed with Latin, these changed once Latin was no longer used as a language of communication. This, in turn, affected the approach toward teaching modern languages until the 19th century, when these deviations were overcome and the reinstitution of the primacy of the oral over the written led to the opening up of the modern era. Richards and Rodgers (1986) are then able to contrast the older approaches in which “tradition was for many years the guiding principle” (p. 14) with the modern era in which there is a “principled approach to language teaching, one based on a scientific approach to the study of language and of language learning” (p. 8). It is clear that the histories that are supportive of the concept of Method also support a historical view that suggests linear development over time, development which has resulted principally from scientific advance, and a view that is therefore clearly supportive of the position of the social scientist/applied linguist. That is to say, these fundamentally ahistorical readings of history and texts rely on a view of knowledge that validates the position of positivist applied linguistics over other forms of possible knowledge. Furthermore, looking in more depth at the claims made 4 Its popularity is evidenced by its inclusion in a number of applied linguists’ “top ten” books

(H. Douglas Brown, Elliot Judd, Joan Morley, Peter Strevens); see Haskell (1987).


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by adherents to the concept of Method, it is tempting to conclude with Clarke (1983) that “the term ‘method’ is a label without substance” (p. 109). There are three important aspects to this: First, there is little agreement as to which methods existed when, and in what order; second, there is little agreement and conceptual coherence to the terms used; and third, there is little evidence that methods ever reflected classroom reality. H. D. Brown (1980) suggests that there has been a new (Kuhnian) paradigm every 25 years of this century, “with each new paradigm a break from the old but taking with it positive aspects of previous paradigms” (p. 244).5 Thus, according to Brown, we have had the Direct Method, the Grammar-Translation Method, the Audiolingual Method, and now have available the Interpersonal Approaches (which include the “new methods”: Community Language Learning, the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, and Total Physical Response [TPR]). Clarke (1982), somewhat hesitantly, also offers four methods: Grammar/Translation, Structural/Audiolingual, Interactional/Humanistic, and Notional/Functional. According to McArthur (1983), there have been five: Grammar-Translation, Direct, Structural, Situational, and Communicative. Stern (1983) hesitantly suggests seven; Larsen-Freeman (1986) and Richards and Rodgers (1986) propose eight. On these last three lists citing seven or eight methods, only Audiolingualism appears on all three. Stern alone mentions the Reading and Audiovisual Methods, and Cognitive Theory (as a method). What, too, are we to make of Brown’s reversal of the more usual sequence by placing GrammarTranslation after the Direct Method? Regarding the second issue, that there is little agreement and conceptual coherence to the terms used, two principal attempts to provide conceptual cohesion to the field have been made by Anthony (1963) and Richards and Rodgers (1982, 1986). Anthony (1963) made a three-part distinction among approach, method, and technique, while Richards and Rodgers (1982) tried to clarify and expand these categories by subsuming approach, design, a n d procedure under the umbrella term method. Reading Richards and Rodgers (1986), however, one is struck by a feeling of strain at attempts to fit disparate concepts into their framework. In many instances, their attempts to demonstrate conceptual unity for methods do not seem justifiable. In their first description, for example, that of the Oral Approach and Situational Language 5 As

one would expect from the foregoing discussion, I take issue with this progressivist description. I would also suggest that this is not quite what Kuhn intended by the concept of paradigm shift. In the second edition of his book, H. D. Brown (1987) lays more emphasis on the cyclical nature of change.

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Teaching, we are told that the linguistic theory behind this is “a type of British ‘structuralism’,” apparently embracing Halliday’s work, and that the theory of learning is “a type of behaviorist habitlearning theory” (p. 35). If the concept of Method assumes coherent theories of language and of learning, surely these descriptions provide inadequate support. The examples used are also inconsistent; in the introduction to one of the books (Alexander, 1967) listed by Richards and Rodgers as apparently situational, the author himself comments on “situational teaching”: In this method, little structural grading is possible. The situation takes precedence over the structures. The patterns that are included arise naturally out of the situation itself: they have a thematic significance rather than a structural one. This system has serious drawbacks [emphasis added]. The dialogues which the student hears are refreshingly natural, but the teaching of basic patterns inevitably becomes much less controlled. (p. xiii) Alexander furthermore insists on strict adherence to the axioms common to the audiolingual era: “Nothing should be spoken before it has been heard; nothing should be read before it has been spoken; nothing should be written before it has been read” (p. xii). Again, claims to coherency dissolve under close scrutiny. Among the so-called methods, audiolingualism appears to provide the best example of coherence;6 there are, nevertheless, a number of reasons to question this. Writing in the early 1960s—at the apparent height of audiolingualism—Mackey (1965) lists 15 methods, one of which, the Mimicry-Memorization Method, he tells us, is also known as the Audiolingual Method. For Mackey at least, it seems that it was not so clear that this method predominated at the time.7 Bazan (1964), in a strong criticism of the assertions of the time, which, she suggests, “cannot claim any status other than that of assumptions” (p. 337), questions not only the claims to empirical validity, but also the fact that this “new methodology” was indeed new, since it bore so many resemblances to previous oral-based approaches. Howatt (1984a) questions the commonly held tenet that the Michigan Oral Approach, out of which audiolingualism is said to have grown, was based on behaviorism. He argues that Fries 6 Indeed,

it might be argued that much of the development of the concept of Method was based on the fact that this one period seems to have been fairly homogeneous: Historical commentary since has tried to create a myth of homogeneity for other periods both before and after audiolingualism. 7 It should be observed that Mackey, like Stern, has little faith in the concept of Method. His important work (1965), along with that of Halliday, McIntosh, and Strevens (1964) and the two smaller works by Bosco and Di Pietro (1970) and Krashen and Seliger (1975), all attempt to construct analytic schemata thatovercome the limitations of Method.


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never mentioned psychology in his earlier papers and that behaviorism was, in fact, rather more complex than the commonsense notions of repetition and practice. Further confusion surrounds the linguistic base. While it seems reasonable to state that language teaching in North America used structuralist grammars in the 1950s and 1960s, it is surely erroneous to suggest, as do Richards and Rodgers (1986), that “Chomsky rejected the structuralist approach to language description” (p. 59). Undoubtedly, Chomsky’s famous attack on Skinner’s work (Chomsky, 1959) marked an important point in linguistic and psychological theory, but his approach to linguistics is surely structuralism par excellence. What he rejected were certain particularities of North American structuralism, especially the empiricist method of investigation, in favor of a more rationalist approach. But the claim that the “Chomskyan Revolution” marked the end of structuralism appears to be another myth that has been repeatedly used to demonstrate a positive leap forward in the progressive path of language teaching. For a time—and especially before the emergence of communication as a term around which a new claim to Method could be built— it was argued that the Audiolingual Method had been replaced by the Cognitive Code Method based on rationalist/deductive procedures and transformational grammar. Looking at Carroll’s (1966) paper, usually cited as documenting this change, however, the situation becomes far less clear. Carroll calls “cognitive code learning theory” a “modified, up-to-date grammar-translation theory,” and also suggests that “in practice, of course, some teachers act as if they believed in both of these theories, appealing to one of them for some of their teaching procedures and to the other for different aspects” (p. 102). What seems ultimately to be implied is that the age-old debate between what Howatt (1984a) calls the “rational” and “natural” approaches to language teaching, or what Rivers (1981, pp. 25-27) calls “formalism” and “activism,” was indeed alive and well in the 1960s, as it had been for the past 2000 years. Of course, the hardest orthodoxy to dislodge is that which suggests that what we are doing today is significantly different from all that has gone before. Raimes (1983), however, suggests that the belief in change is frequently founded on superficial views: “All too often scholars look at classroom methodology rather than the underlying intellectual assumptions which generate methods” (p. 538). Examining orientations to teaching in the early 1980s, she concludes that “the current emphasis on communication has . . . been absorbed neatly into our positivist traditional framework. Far from 604

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superceding tradition, it has been assimilated into it” (Raimes, 1983, p. 545; see also Swan, 1985). Clarke (1982) also expresses doubts about many of the apparent changes that are claimed to have occurred in language teaching, warning us of the “tyranny of bandwagons” which “effectively constrains professional thought and debate” (p. 445). Horowitz (1986) has also recently drawn attention to the problems of designating new methods, approaches, or techniques. He suggests that there is in fact far less than is being claimed to “process writing,” which he describes as one of the new buzzwords of TESOL, “the ‘communicative competence’ of the mid-1980s” (p. 141). Richards and Rodgers (1986) in fact suggest that “communicative language teaching is best considered an approach rather than a method” (p. 83) since, despite some theoretical consistency, design and procedure are fairly open to interpretation. Similarly, H. D. Brown (1980, p. 240) shows some general discomfort with the Method concept: “the term approach may be more accurately descriptive of these general moods.” He argues that the “Audiolingual Method, for example, would be better termed an approach because there is such variation within the so-called method.” I would also suggest that the Direct Method, which according to Stern (1983) is characterized by the “use of the target language as a means of instruction and communication in the classroom” (p. 456), is an equally general orientation or approach. This does not leave much else with the status of Method other than the “so-called new methods” (Richards & Rodgers, 1986). If we examine LarsenFreeman’s (1986) description of these so-called methods, however, her examples all occur on the opening day of a beginning class (see van Lier, 1987), suggesting they are of a very different order from the other approaches, for which a much greater variety of examples is given. The “new methods” seem to reduce to a constellation of techniques, which is not to say there is nothing valuable to be gained from them. The other methods seem to expand out to broad educational orientations. As regards the conceptual coherence of methods and attempts to better define them, it is worth concluding by quoting Clarke (1983) at some length: I contend that our traditional three-part distinction of approach, method and technique—as commonly interpreted—is inadequate. Approach, by limiting our perspective of language learning and teaching, serves as a blinder which hampers, rather than encourages, professional growth. Method is so vague that it means just about anything that anyone wants it to mean, with the result that, in fact, it means nothing. And technique, by giving the impression that teaching activities can be understood as abstractions separate from the context in which they occur, obscures the METHOD, INTERESTED KNOWLEDGE, AND POLITICS

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fact that classroom practice is a dynamic interaction of diverse systems. (p. 111) It would seem, then, that despite attempts to clarify the Method concept and to use it analytically, serious doubts exist about its conceptual validity. The third and extremely important doubt exists about whether the claims made in the literature as to the predominance of a certain method at a certain time ever reflected what was actually happening in classrooms. Studies conducted to test the relative efficacies of methods (e.g., Scherer & Wertheimer, 1964; Smith, 1970) remained largely inconclusive, in part because they lacked any element of classroom observation, relying simply on pre- and posttesting. Since, as has been argued, the category of Method is conceptually weak, any study that claims that teachers are adhering to a certain method, without rigorous definition of that method and classroom observation, is ultimately of little value. More recent studies that have included classroom observation (e.g., Fröhlich, Spada, & Allen, 1985; Long & Sato, 1983) have begun suggesting that there is far less concordance than expected among what teachers claim to be doing, what researchers anticipate to be happening, and what actually appears to be occurring in classes. While a number of writers, such as Rivers (1981), have emphasized eclecticism in language teaching, suggesting that teachers in fact pick and choose from different methods, this idea, as Stern (1983) points out, still has the serious drawback of implying the conceptual unity of methods (even if teachers do not adhere to them). A clearer understanding of the situation, then, suggests that teachers make a whole series of decisions about teaching based on their own educational experiences, their personalities, their particular institutional, social, cultural, and political circumstances, their understanding of their particular students’ collective and individual needs, and so on. Any relationship between these decisions and theories about pedagogy and language learning are highly complex and need to be studied without the use of a priori categories, especially when those categories are as clumsy and unspecific as are methods. As any teacher who has taught through any of the alleged upheavals over Method can testify, there is a remarkable disparity between, on the one hand, the dictates of “experts” and teaching textbooks, and on the other, actual classroom practice. This suggests a close relationship between academic thought and textbook publication, but little between these and the knowledge produced by teachers in their daily practice. Despite the inherent weakness of the concept of Method, 606

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extravagant claims have at times been made for different methods. An example of this can clearly be seen in Krashen’s use of Asher’s evaluation of TPR. Krashen (1982, p. 155) claims that “Asher has done a thorough job in putting his method to the empirical test,” in which, comparing TPR students to a control group following a “standard” course, he “reported that after only 32 hours of TPR instruction, TPR students outperformed controls, who had had 150 hours of classtime, in a test of listening comprehension, and equaled controls in tests of reading and writing. Asher’s students progressed nearly five times faster!” Krashen then argues that this provides sound empirical proof that “methods that provide more of the input necessary for acquisition, and that ‘put grammar in its place,’ are superior to older approaches. ” As Beretta (1986) points out, however, there are serious problems both with the evaluation itself, since TPR teaching materials were used as test materials for both experimental and control groups, and with Krashen’s interpretation of the evaluation, since Krashen’s implication that TPR students equaled controls who had received 150 hours of instruction on a test of reading and writing is “simply not the case” (1986, p. 433). Krashen’s position can be understood more clearly if we look at this work from the point of view of interested knowledge: Namely that he works within a positivist framework that claims such work is objective; his own beliefs strongly support a view of this type of teaching technique as superior to others; and he has committed himself to these ideas by coauthoring another “method,” the Natural Approach (Krashen & Terrell, 1983). While Krashen and Terrell acknowledge their indebtedness to the earlier Natural Method— “the approach we will present in this book is in many ways the natural, direct method rediscovered” (1983, p. 17) —their brief historical overview is similar to Titone’s (1968); they argue that the earlier Natural Method was indeed a positive move away from the long adherence to the misguided Grammar-Translation Method. Their strongest arguments to support their approach, however, rest on their claims to rigorous scientific backing, that the Natural Approach (unlike the Natural Method) is “based on an empirically grounded theory of second language acquisition, which has been supported by a large number of scientific studies in a wide variety of language acquisition and learning contexts” (1983, p. 1). Interestingly, comments on this method are divided along the lines we observed previously between the progressivists (Method supporters) and the historicists. Thus, while Richards and Rogers (1986) go to some lengths to outline the differences between Krashen and Terrell’s Natural Approach and the 19th century Natural Method, Howatt (1984b, p. 281) skeptically makes the METHOD, INTERESTED KNOWLEDGE, AND POLITICS

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following comparison, commenting that “the similarity [of Sauveur’s Natural Method] to Krashen and Terrell’s ‘Natural Approach’ goes beyond the almost identical labels”: Let us count the fingers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. We have ten fingers. I have ten fingers; you have ten fingers, mademoiselle. How many fingers have you, madame? (I have ten fingers). And you, monsieur? (And I also). And George? (And George also). Do you see the ten fingers? (Yes). Let us count the fingers together. (Sauveur, 1874, p. 11) Let us count the number of students with blue eyes. One, two, three, four . . . Are there any others? (Jim). Oh, of course, we can’t forget Jim. Yes, he has blue eyes. Now, who has brown eyes? Does Martha have brown eyes? (Yes). And what color is her hair? (Brown). Is it light brown or dark brown? (Light). Is she wearing a dress today? (No). A skirt? (Yes). What color is the skirt? (Blue). Yes, it’s a blue skirt with white stripes. (Krashen & Terrell, 1983, p. 81) Once again, recourse to historical information starts to erode the claims made by academics in the name of modernism, positivism, progress, and objectivity. Let us, therefore, return to the historicist position and leave the last word of this section to Kelly (1969): “That the expert in language teaching acts with the purity of motive and design expected from a scientist is demonstrably untrue. Discoveries are filtered by social and educational needs, and what suits the circumstances is what is considered proved” (p. 407). KNOWLEDGE, TEXTS, TEACHERS, AND POWER The construction of the Method concept in language teaching has been a typical example of the attempt to validate current forms of knowledge at the expense of past forms. While it is clear that language teaching has undergone many transformations over the centuries, a thorough examination of the past suggests that these changes have represented different configurations of the same basic options rather than some linear, additive progress toward the present day, and that these changes are due principally to shifts in the social, cultural, political, and philosophical climate. The Method construct that has been the predominant paradigm used to conceptualize teaching not only fails to account adequately for these historical conditions, but also is conceptually inconsistent, conflating categories and types at all levels and failing to demonstrate intellectual rigor. It is also highly questionable whether so-called methods ever reflected what was actually going on in classrooms. 608

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Serious implications arise from this reconstruction of the Method concept, implications which go far beyond the reassessment of an academic issue. Put another way, if the argument has been that all knowledge is interested, we may indeed want to ask what interests are served by particular forms of knowledge. It is therefore important both to understand the construction of the Method concept within an apolitical, ahistorical, positivist, and progressivist orientation to education, and to investigate the effects of the production of that knowledge. This knowledge, then, should be seen within its political context and, more specifically, in its relationship to the political economy of textbook publishing, the hierarchical nature of knowledge production, the gendered issue of teaching practice, and educational imperialism in the teaching of English as an international language. As I think has been convincingly shown in the previous section, the Method concept is ultimately prescriptive rather than descriptive: Rather than analyzing what is happening in language classrooms, it is a prescription for classroom behavior. This relationship has been clearly noted by Clarke and Silberstein (1988): “Prescriptions are implicit in virtually all discussions of the relationship between theory and practice” (p. 685). What this immediately suggests is a troubling relationship in which methods serve the advancement of academic careers and limit the practice of teachers. When we look at the question of what knowledge is legitimated in schools, it is essential, as Apple’s work (e.g., 1986) has cogently demonstrated, that we look at the political economy of textbook publishing (see also Tollefson in this issue of the TESOL Quarterly). Although this question of knowledge or “content” is an important one, especially as regards the trivialization of content endemic to SLE, it is not an issue with which I shall deal here. The significance of looking at the political economy of textbooks for the discussion here lies in establishing that the definition and academic legitimation of methods is clearly beneficial to the publishing industry. As Richards (1984) argues, “The terms notional-functional and communicative sell. Many an underpaid academic has consequently succumbed to attractive offers to lightly work over an audiolingual or structural course so that it can be published in a new edition bearing a notional-functional or communicative label” (p. 14). The obvious commercial benefits for publishers deriving from methods, the support given for methods by universities and their journals (the example of the involvement of the University of Michigan and its journal, Language Learning, in promoting Audiolingualism is significant here), and the pushing of methods through institutions such as the British Council or Berlitz all suggest METHOD, INTERESTED KNOWLEDGE, AND POLITICS

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important political, economic, and ideological reasons for the growth and maintenance of the Method concept. Defense Department funding for structuralist linguistics and audiolingualism is a strong example of this. Newmeyer (1986) supplies a telling quotation from Mortimer Graves, the executive secretary of the American Council of Learned Societies, a major source of research funding, who in 1950 argued that ideological World War III has started and there is no certainty that it is well won yet. In spite of the fact that this is a war for men’s [sic] minds, there exist no Joint Chiefs of Staff planning such a war, no war production authority concerning itself with material for such a war. These questions are by and large, in our society, left to the private initiative of the type that one sees in the Georgetown Institute of Languages and Linguistics. In this war for men’s [sic] minds, obviously the big guns of our armament is [sic] competence in languages and linguistics. (p. 56) Another aspect of the “interest” in Method may be seen in the context of the gradual de-skilling of the teacher’s role. As Apple (1986) and Giroux (1988) argue, the rise of scientism and the social efficiency movement in the 1920s, the use of management systems in curricula, the development of behavioral objectives, the increasing state intervention in schools, the development of “teacher-proof” materials and prespecified teaching procedures, and the recent moves, especially in the U.K. and U. S., toward more centralized curricula, have led to a de-skilling of the role of teachers and greater institutional control over classroom practice. While this is a significantly troubling observation in itself, there is a further dimension that Apple (1986), in particular, has emphasized: We cannot understand the nature of and reasons for that control unless we understand who is controlling and who is teaching, namely “the state, in concert with capital and a largely male academic body of consultants and developers, intervening at the level of practice into the work of a largely female workforce” (1986, pp. 36-37). If this is true in education in general, it is surely even more so in SLE, where, as G. Brown has recently observed, “the people at the top tend to be men, whereas the people who do most of the day-to-day teaching work tend to be women” (see “Sitting on a Rocket,” 1989, p. 171). Thus, as Apple (1986) goes on, “This is not only the history of the control of state employees to bring about efficient teaching, but a rearticulation of the dynamics of patriarchy and class in one site, the school” (p. 40). What I am suggesting is that the Method concept has played a major role in maintaining the gendered division of the 610

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workforce, a hierarchically organized division between male conceptualizes and female practitioners.8 The same unequal relationship is played out in the international context. A recent study by Burnaby and Sun (1989) suggests that we must examine the teaching context very carefully before promoting communicative approaches, since they may be inappropriate for a number of reasons. Education is always socioculturally embedded; as Hall (1986) argues, “A lifetime’s experience has convinced me that no society and no culture should force its educational system on another” (p. 168). Yet, given the unequal power relationships that exist between central and peripheral countries, and the “discourse of development” (Escobar, 1984, p. 378) within which much contact occurs, it is exactly the type of epistemological presumptiveness of the Method concept that allows such impositions to occur. Sampson (1984) outlines three major problems in the export of Canadian language teaching methods to China: The first stems from the “fallacy of the unidimensionality of development,” i.e., the fallacy that everything exported from “developed” to “developing” countries is advanced. The second stems from a “confusion between scientific and educational theories,” i.e., extending positivism to educational theory. The third stems from “technocratic imperialism, ” i.e., the export of supposedly value-free intellectual goods. These attitudes, along with the status accorded foreign teachers abroad, causes considerable conflict: “Perhaps because foreign teachers are referred to as ‘experts’ in China, some think they are the only ones who possess teaching expertise” (Wu, 1983, p. 15). Many Western teachers abroad blithely assume the superiority of their methods. When we consider that, as I have argued, these methods are such loose constellations of techniques that they have little coherence, it suggests that Western teachers and teacher trainers frequently promote whatever techniques they happen to prefer, while supporting their views by recourse to the Method concept and its supposedly scientific and advanced backing. Furthermore, teachers from those countries who have studied in the prestigious institutions in the West and, despite misgivings, have imbibed the TESOL orthodoxies, are faced, on their return, with the serious problem of the contradiction between the need to validate themselves and their newly gained knowledge, and the feeling that it is nevertheless largely inappropriate.9 would like to thank an anonymous TESOL Quarterly reviewer for helping me see the full implications of this point. 9 I do not want to suggest, however, that the largely female workforce, teachers in other countries, or these returned teachers unquestioningly accept these dogmas. There is certainly constant resistance, which in part accounts for the disparity between academics’ claims and classroom realities. 8I


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CONCLUSION I have argued that we must see all knowledge claims as interested, that is to say, that knowledge is socially constructed, represents particular ways of understanding and explaining the world, and, since it therefore always reflects the interests of certain individuals or groups, is inevitably inscribed in relationships of power. While this view of knowledge has prompted inquiry in a number of areas of the social sciences, it has done little so far to challenge the positivist and progressivist orthodoxies of linguistics and applied linguistics. Since language teaching, and especially English language teaching, has become such a vast concern, it is imperative that we respond to these challenges to the predominant modes of thinking by reexamining some of our most basic beliefs about the nature of language and language teaching and about the ways in which such questions should be investigated. This is of critical importance, I believe, not merely in terms of theoretical questions concerning conceptual paradigms in language teaching, but, far more importantly, with respect to fundamental questions about the shaping forces of our thought and the interests that those shapings serve. The power of the Western male academy in defining and prescribing concepts—whether it be SLA theory (see Nayar, 1989), methods, or any other area of the canon of TESOL orthodoxy—articulates a positivist, progressivist, and patriarchal view that plays an important role in maintaining inequities between, on the one hand, predominantly male academics and, on the other, female teachers and language classrooms on the international power periphery. For all of us, it is crucial that we see the social and political roles we play and the social and political implications of the theoretical paradigms that inform our work. At a time when all education is threatened by the conservative drive toward standardized curricula, and a move “back to basics,” a move which threatens all openness and diversity in education and ignores questions of class, race, or gender difference, a move which threatens finally to render the teacher as nothing but a technician trained to transmit a fixed canon of knowledge, it is essential that teachers start to oppose those forms of knowledge that are being thrust upon them under the guise of scientific objectivity. As I have argued, Method is one such concept: An analysis of both the history and the present state of language teaching suggests that it has little conceptual validity and yet is a construct central to many teacher education programs, constantly used to legitimate various educational practices as if they were the newest development in a long line of scientific improvement dating back to the last century. 612

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What is needed is perhaps encapsulated in Giroux’s concept of the teacher as “transformative intellectual.” This means seeing ourselves “as professionals who are able and willing to reflect upon the ideological principles that inform [our] practice, who connect pedagogical theory and practice to wider social issues, and who work together to share ideas, exercise power over the conditions of [our] labor, and embody in [our] teaching a vision of a better and more humane life” (Giroux & McLaren, 1989, p. xxiii). This definition should, of course, include academics as transformative intellectuals; reciprocal relationships can indeed be developed, and we should either see practice and theory as informing each other, or, better still, do away with this distinction all together. Rather than opting for “reductionist descriptions which are easier to understand but which, by definition, are incomplete and inaccurate” (Clarke, 1983, p. 107), rather than trying to understand our practice according to some form of totalizing or universal discourse, we need to recognize the complexities of language teaching and its contexts, and strive to validate other, local forms of knowledge about language and teaching.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to thank Merrill Swain and John Clegg for their stimulating discussion of an earlier version of this paper.

THE AUTHOR Alastair Pennycook left China last year after three rich and fascinating years teaching at Xiangtan University, Hunan. He is currently looking at a range of issues around the cultural and political implications of the global spread of English.

REFERENCES Alexander, L. G. (1967). New concept English (Teacher’s Book). London: Longman. Altbach, P. (1981). The university as center and periphery. Teachers College Record, 82 (4), 601-622. Anthony, E. M. (1963). Approach, method and technique. English Language Teaching ]ournal, 17, 63-67.


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De Lauretis, T. (Ed.). (1986). Feminist studies, critical studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Escobar, A. (1984). Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the third world. Alternatives, 10, 377400. Feyerabend, P. (1988). Against method. London: Verso. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1927-1977. New York: Pantheon. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Harvey. Fröhlich, M., Spada, N., & Allen, P. (1985). Differences in the communicative orientation of L2 classrooms. TESOL Quarterly, 19 (1), 27-58. Giroux, H. A. (1983). Theory and resistance in education: A pedagogy for the opposition. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Harvey. Giroux, H. A. (1988). Schooling and the struggle for public life: Critical pedagogy in the modern age. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Giroux, H. A., & McLaren, P. (1989). Introduction to H. A. Giroux & P. McLaren (Eds.), Critical pedagogy, the state, and cultural struggle (pp. xi-xxxv). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Gregg, K. (1986). [Review of The input hypothesis: Issues and implications]. TESOL Quarterly, 20 (1), 116-122. Grimshaw, J. (1986). Philosophy and feminist thinking. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action (Vol. 1). Boston: Beacon Press. Hall, E. T. (1986). Unstated features of the cultural context of learning. In A. Thomas & E. T. Ploman (Eds.), Learning and development in a global perspective (pp. 157-176). Toronto: OISE Press. Halliday, M. A. K., McIntosh, A., & Strevens, P. (1964). The linguistic sciences and language teaching. London: Longman. Harding, S. (1986). The science question in feminism. New York: Cornell University Press. Harris, K. (1979). Education and knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Harris, R. (1987, December 11-17). In and out of the language lab [Review of The politics of linguistics]. Times Literary Supplement, 1373. Haskell, J. F. (1987). A bare-bones bibliography bookshelf. TESOL Newsletter, 21 (2), 37-46. Hebdige, D. (1986). Postmodernism and “the other side.” Journal of Communication Inquiry. 10(2), 78-99. Horowitz, D. (1986). Process, not product: Less than meets the eye. TESOL Quarterly, 20 (1), 141-143. Howatt, A. P. R. (1983). Five-hundred years of English language teaching. ELT Journal, 37 (3), 262-265. METHOD, INTERESTED KNOWLEDGE, AND POLITICS

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Howatt, A. P. R. (1984a). A history of English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Howatt, A. P. R. (1984b). Language teaching traditions: 1884 revisited. ELT Journal, 38 (4), 279-282. Illich, I. (1981). Vernacular values. In Shadow work (pp. 29-51). Boston: M. Boyars. Judd, E. L. (1983). TESOL as a political act: A moral question. In J. Handscombe, R. A. Orem, & B. P. Taylor (Eds.), On TESOL ’83 (pp. 265-273). Washington, DC: TESOL. Keller, E. F. (1985). Reflections on gender and science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kelly, L. G. (1969). 25 centuries of language teaching. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Kothari, R. (1987). On humane governance. Alternatives, 12, 277-290. Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Krashen, S. D., & Seliger, H. (1975). The essential contribution of formal instruction in adult second language learning. TESOL Quarterly, 9 (2), 173-183. Krashen, S. D., & Terrell, T. D. (1983). The natural approach: Language acquisition in the classroom. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Kuhn, T. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. C h i c a g o : University of Chicago Press. Lambley, K. (1920). The teaching and cultivation of the French language in England during Tudor and Stuart times. London: Longman. Larsen-Freeman, D. (1986). Techniques and principles in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Long, M. H., & Sato, C. (1983). Classroom foreigner talk discourse: Forms and functions of teachers’ questions. In H. Seliger & M. H. Long (Eds.), Classroom oriented research in second language acquisition (pp. 268285). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Lyotard, J. (1984). The postmodern condition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mackey, W. F. (1965). Language teaching analysis. London: Longman. Mackey, W. F. (1970). Foreword to L. Jakobovits, Foreign language learning: A psycholinguistic analysis of the issues (pp. vii-xiii). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Marcuse, H. (1964). One-dimensional man. Boston: Beacon Press. McArthur, T. (1983). A foundation course for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mey, J. (1985). Whose language? A study in linguistic pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mukherjee, T. (1986). ESL: An imported new empire? Journal of Moral Education, 15 (1), 43-49. Nandy, A. (1983). The intimate enemy: Loss and recovery of self under colonialism. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 616

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Nayar, P. B. (1989, March). From Krasher to Ashen: Ethnocentrism and universality in TESOL. Paper presented at the 23rd Annual TESOL Convention, San Antonio, TX. Ndebele, N. S. (1987). The English language and social change in South Africa. The English Academy Review, 4, 1-16. Newmeyer, F. J. (1986). The politics of linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Peirce, B. N. (1989). Toward a pedagogy of possibility in the teaching of English internationally. TESOL Quarterly, 23 (3), 401-420. Phillipson, R. (1988). Linguicism: Structures and ideologies in linguistic imperialism. In J. Cummins & T. Skuttnab-Kangas (Eds. ), Minority education: From shame to struggle (pp. 339-358). Avon: Multilingual Matters. Popkewitz, T. S. (1984). Paradigm and ideology in educational research. Basingstoke: Falmer Press. Raimes, A. (1983). Tradition and revolution in ESL teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 17 (4), 535-552. Richards, J. C. (1984). The secret life of methods. TESOL Quarterly, 18 (1), 7-24. Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. (1982). Method: Approach, design, and procedure. TESOL Quarterly, 16 (2), 153-168. Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. (1986). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rivers, W. M. (1981). Teaching foreign language skills (2nd ed.). Chicago: Chicago University Press. Sampson, G. P. (1984). Exporting language teaching methods from Canada to China. TESL Canada Journal, 1 (l), 19-31. Sauveur, L. (1874). Introduction to the teaching of living languages without grammar or dictionary. Boston: Schoenhof & Moeller. Scherer, G. A. C., & Wertheimer, M. (1964). A psycholinguistic experiment in foreign language teaching. New York: McGraw-Hill. Silva, E. T., & Slaughter, S. A. (1984). Serving power: The making of the academic social science expert. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Simon, R. (1984). Signposts for a critical pedagogy [Review of Theory and resistance in education]. Educational Theory, 34 (4), 379-388. Simon, R. (1987). Empowerment as a pedagogy of possibility. Language Arts, 64, 370-383. Sitting on a rocket. (1989). [Interview with Professor Gillian Brown]. ELT Journal, 43 (3), 167-172. Smith, P. D., Jr. (1970). A comparison of the cognitive and audiolingual approaches to foreign language instruction: The Pennsylvania foreign language project. Philadelphia, PA: Center for Curriculum Development. Stern, H. H. (1983). Fundamental concepts of language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stern, H. H. (1985). [Review of Methods that work: A smorgasbord of ideas for language teachers]. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 7 (2), 249-251. METHOD, INTERESTED KNOWLEDGE, AND POLITICS

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Approaches to Faculty Evaluation for ESL MARTHA C. PENNINGTON University of Hawaii at Manoa

AILEEN L. YOUNG Hawaiian Missionary Academy

On the basis of research on teacher evaluation in the larger educational context, this paper assesses the applicability to ESL of seven common faculty evaluation methods: teacher interviews, competency tests, student evaluations, student achievement, classroom observation, peer review, and faculty self-evaluation. Each method is assessed in terms of its strengths and limitations with regard to faculty evaluation in general and for TESOL in particular. A developmental orientation to faculty evaluation is outlined in which various aspects of teaching are evaluated at different stages of the teacher’s career and in which a combination of methods is used. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations for the implementation of faculty evaluation in an ESL context.

Faculty evaluation has long been a controversial and ill-defined process in education. Armstrong (1972) noted that teacher evaluation may be represented by a variety of negative symbols: Yardstick, Guillotine, Stethoscope, Peeping Tom, Final Examination, and Psychiatrist’s Couch. “Everyone in education has his [sic] own notion about teacher evaluation” (Armstrong, 1972, p. 3). Since the nature and quality of the faculty can make or break a language program (Eskey, 1982), administrators and teachers in ESL programs have a central concern with faculty evaluation. Moreover, faculty evaluation is of central importance to the field of ESL at large, since its goals and procedures help to define the standards of our evolving profession. The purpose of this paper is to survey the published literature on methods for teacher evaluation with a view to their application in ESL programs. Based on research conducted over the past 25 years, a number of approaches to evaluation are described, and issues of 619

their effectiveness addressed. The exploration of ESL faculty evaluation in relation to the larger educational context helps to identify those goals, procedures, and standards in second language teaching and teacher evaluation that we hold in common with other teaching fields, while at the same time delimiting the unique aspects of TESOL. Through such an investigation, we can begin to develop our own approaches to faculty evaluation that the profession will accept as valid and reliable measures. The paper begins by outlining a variety of perspectives on faculty evaluation. This is followed by a discussion of seven common methods of teacher evaluation, noting the strengths and weaknesses of each and offering suggestions for their appropriate use in the specific context of ESL. In the final sections of the paper, we suggest an approach to faculty evaluation that assesses various aspects of teaching at different stages of the faculty member’s career, and make recommendations for effective evaluation within the ESL context. PERSPECTIVES ON FACULTY EVALUATION Within the broad area of educational evaluation, two different types of evaluation, stemming from different motivations, are customarily identified. The formative evaluation is intended to help teachers improve their performance by providing them with information, judgments, and suggestions on what and how to teach. The summative evaluation is geared less for the teacher than for the administrator, providing information for decision-making with respect to hiring, firing, tenure, promotion, assignments, and salary (Millman, 1981a). Beyond the basic formative or summative orientation of an evaluation process, faculty evaluation may be conducted from a variety of perspectives. Four aspects of teaching that are commonly evaluated are competency, competence, performance, and effectiveness. Medley, Coker, & Soar (1984) define these as follows: Teacher competency, a specific knowledge, ability, or value position that a teacher either possesses or does not possess, which is believed to be important to success as a teacher. Teacher competence, the repertoire of competencies a teacher possesses. The more competencies a teacher possesses, the more competent a teacher is said to be. Teacher performance, what the teacher does on the job; it is defined in terms of teacher behavior under a specified set of conditions. How well a teacher performs depends in part on how competent the teacher 620

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is—what competencies the teacher possesses—and in part on the situation in which the teacher performs. Teacher effectiveness, the results a teacher gets; it is defined in terms of what [students] do, not what the teacher does or can do. (pp. 14-15) Each of these perspectives on teacher evaluation implies different sorts of requirements, standards of performance, and evaluation mechanisms. The development of a faculty evaluation system that will be effective in a particular context therefore requires an examination of the available evaluation methods and their appropriateness for assessing these different aspects of teaching both formatively and summatively. There exist a range of methods by which teachers may be evaluated, each of which may be more or less effective for certain purposes and circumstances of evaluation. These include teacher interviews, competency tests, student evaluations, student achievement, classroom observation, peer review, and faculty self-evaluation. We will examine each of the methods in turn, noting the advantages and disadvantages inherent in each and drawing conclusions for faculty evaluation in ESL. Teacher Interviews Haefele (1981) identifies two functions of interviews: (a) to select a teacher for employment and (b) to convey a performance appraisal to the teacher who is already employed. In the selection interview, the primary goal is to determine which candidate possesses the experience and competencies that most closely match the critical requirements for the vacant teaching position. These critical requirements are the responsibilities and demands associated with the job, to be discussed in detail with each candidate by the interviewer. Typically, the interview consists of questions, prepared in advance and perhaps rank-ordered, to be asked of the candidate in privacy. The interviewer may use both directive and nondirective approaches to question the candidate. In the latter approach, an interview question might be phrased as follows: “Discipline in the schools is viewed by many as an important national issue. Perhaps you could share some of your ideas or experiences in this area in connection with teaching students of English as a second language.” In a directive approach to interviewing, the interviewer might instead pose the following question: “How would you deal with one or more persistently disruptive students?” (Haefele, 1981, p. 47). The standardized interview method known as the Teacher Perceiver Interview (TPI) reflects a preformatted directive approach FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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(Haefele, 1978; Muller, 1978). The TPI consists of 60 open-ended questions, many of them presented as simulated problems such as the following: “John tells you that Robert’s school work has suddenly slid from good to poor because of problems at home. ” The candidate is then required to describe what action the teacher should take. Responses to each of the 60 questions are rated as O (failed) or 1 (passed). The TPI has some advantages over other kinds of selective interviews in that its questions are standardized and scoring is on a pass/no-pass basis, thus making it relatively objective and easy to administer. It does, however, have some disadvantages. Among these are the potentially infinite variations on acceptable and unacceptable responses (Muller, 1978), the impersonal atmosphere in which the interview must be given and the lack of verbal interaction between interviewer and candidate, and the expense of administering the interviews, e.g., of training interviewers (Haefele, 1981, pp. 48-49). In spite of its shortcomings, the TPI provides a range of situations and response types that may be helpful for ESL administrators seeking to develop a uniform set of questions for interviewing prospective ESL teachers. Another type of interview is for the purpose of reviewing teaching performance. This type of interview might be held on a periodic basis (e.g., once a year) or following classroom observation of the teacher by the program administrator or other designated individual. According to Haefele (1981), the performance review process and its associated interviews may serve a number of quite different purposes, including the following: — Warning that improvement in teaching is needed — Establishing teaching performance standards for the coming year — Motivating teacher performance — Assessing the degree to which teaching performance standards have been achieved — Recognizing superior teaching performance — Determining what the evaluator or others can do to sustain or improve teaching performance (p. 51) In the performance review process, interviews may serve the purpose of redirecting or recognizing performance in a number of different ways. In some cases, an explicit directive may be issued to the teacher to make some change in behavior within a timeframe set by the administrator. Within educational contexts, a directive approach is generally considered appropriate only for relatively new teachers (see Copeland, 1982). Experienced teachers benefit more from a nondirective approach (i.e., the teacher is asked to reflect on performance and then to set goals for professional 622

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development) or a collaborative approach (i.e., the teacher and supervisor jointly evaluate performance and set goals). While Delamere (1986) cautions that most methods of teacher evaluation and supervision represent undesirable extremes of judgmental or nonjudgmental approaches, more moderate approaches to teacher evaluation and supervision have been described in the literature (Freeman, 1982; Gebhard, 1984; Pennington, 1989). For a successful supervisory interview, Hyman (1975) suggests that feedback should be focused on the following: – The actual performance of the teacher rather than on [his/her] personality — Observations rather than assumptions, inferences, or explanations — Description rather than evaluation — The specific and concrete rather than the general and abstract — The present rather than the past — Sharing information rather than giving advice — Alternatives rather than “the” best path — Information and ideas phrased in terms of “more or less” rather than “either-or” — What the teacher, the receiver, needs rather than on what you, the sender, need to get off your chest — What the teacher can use and manage rather than on all the information you have gathered — Modifiable items rather than on what the teacher cannot do anything about — What the teacher requests from you rather than on what you could impose upon [him/her] (pp. 146-149) Hyman also recommends that the supervisor ask the teacher to summarize points made in the interview, as a check that feedback is being accurately understood (p. 118). The major advantage of the teacher interview is its confidential nature, which allows for the possibility of gathering authentic data in private. Compared to some other forms of faculty evaluation, however, interviews are relatively time-consuming. Also, because input on performance is given in a relatively formal, one-on-one format, interviewees may suffer discomfort, or worse, unfair treatment or bias. Interviewers with special training or experience can make the process more comfortable, while use of multiple interviewers reduces the chance of bias. Taking steps to ensure that the interview proceeds in a nonthreatening manner and allows ample time for the interviewee to speak will go a long way toward FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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decreasing discomfort. An interview conducted in this way encourages not only the desired results in the short-run, but also desirable long-range results, such as continuing professional development and positive relations between interviewer and interviewee. Accordingly, hiring and performance appraisal interviews with ESL teachers should be conducted by experienced interviewers who are able to convey and negotiate information in a nonthreatening, interactive manner. Competency Tests Teacher competency testing has become increasingly popular in the past two decades. A standardized test battery for teachers in current vogue is the National Teacher Examinations (NTE). The program includes Core Battery tests (which measure communication skills, general knowledge, and professional knowledge) and Specialty Area tests (which measure understanding of the content and methods applicable to separate subject areas such as art, biology, etc.). In many states, competency tests which aim to measure minimum teacher competencies in basic skills are used for initial certification of new or prospective teachers. In 1988, 39 states had set up or were in the process of setting up standardized or customized teacher certification testing (Eisenberg & Rudner, 1988). Of these, 21 had committed to the NTE, while 6 had committed to the PPST (PreProfessional Skills Test) and 2 to the CBEST (California Basic Skills Test). Many states now require teachers to pass standardized tests for certification in bilingual education, language development, or other areas related to English as a second language. Some school districts have devised their own testing procedures for screening job applicants and use these instead of, or in conjunction with, standardized competency tests. In other cases, educational institutions have shown an interest in testing veteran teachers to determine their competency at a noninitial point in their career (Gudridge, 1980), although this movement has not yet attracted any attention in ESL, as far as we are aware. The advantages of the NTE and other paper-and-pencil tests of teacher competency are that they (a) guarantee a minimum standard of knowledge, (b) eliminate individual bias, and (c) are legally defensible (Darling-Hammond, Wise, & Pease, 1983). However, critics claim that such tests do not reliably judge the efficacy of experienced teachers (Gudridge, 1980); furthermore, because a higher level of knowledge does not necessarily assure effective teaching (Haefele, 1981), these tests cannot assess or 624

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predict the classroom performance of teachers. Research conducted on early versions of the NTE demonstrated no evidence that these scores predicted success in teaching, whether estimated from ratings or from gain scores of students (Quirk, Witten, & Weinberg, 1973). Clearly, such tests only scratch the surface of the competencies that are generally believed to be associated with effective teaching. For ESL, these might include the following, adapted from the competencies compiled by Delamere (1986, pp. 329-330) based on literature specific to TESOL: Knowledge — Second language acquisition process — Learning theory — Psychology of education, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics — Effective learning strategies — Communication strategies used by learners — Affective variables influencing language learning: empathy, attitude, personality Skills — Assessment and diagnostic skills — Teaching techniques—“a bag of tricks” —Flexibility and ability to “switch gears” when necessary in the classroom — Flexibility and adaptability in the use and development of materials — Skill in various methodological trends — Ability for “self-access” (self-reliance based on a comprehensive grasp of the field) Attitudes — Interpersonal skills — Intercultural awareness and intercultural skills — Empathy with students — “Personal front and style” (pleasantness and self-assurance) — Ability to student-center the teaching and to take account of individual learning style — Concern for students’ self-esteem, identification, and lack of self-consciousness FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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While the possession of the above attributes may represent an ideal or standard against which teachers are measured, it seems patently obvious that all of these competencies could not be assessed by means of a standardized test of teacher competence. Any such test is necessarily selective and therefore open to challenge in terms of its construct validity. Nevertheless, a selective test of certain aspects of teacher competence may be of value if (a) it is limited in application (e. g., to certify that a candidate in a teacher education program possesses the requisite knowledge and skills for graduation) and (b) its predictive validity is high in terms of later assessments of mature teaching competencies, classroom performance, and/or teaching effectiveness. Therefore, any test intended to certify competence in ESL should be focused on certain specifiable competencies and examined for correlation with measures of the competence, performance, and effectiveness of teachers in actual classrooms.

Student Evaluations The method of assessing teachers by student evaluations has been claimed by faculty, students, and administrators at one time or another to be “reliable, valid, and useful and unreliable, invalid, and useless” (Aleamoni, 1981, p. 110). According to Darling-Hammond, Wise, and Pease (1983), student evaluations of teachers are a form of classroom observation, where the observers are students rather than administrators or teachers. Student evaluations are more often carried out at the secondary and college level than at the elementary level, and student ratings have tended to substitute for other forms of faculty evaluation in those institutions, both in the U.S. and abroad (Thorne, Scott, & Beaird, 1976; O’Connell & Smartt, 1979). Summarizing Aleamoni (1981), the rationale for gathering student ratings includes the following: — Students are the main source of information about the accomplishment of important educational goals, areas of rapport, degrees of communication, and the existence of problems between instructors and students. — Students are the most logical evaluators of the quality and effectiveness of course elements such as instructors, texts, homework, course content, and general student attitudes toward the course. — Student ratings provide a means of communication between students and instructor which, in turn, may raise the level of instruction or stimulate the institution to consider its overall goals and values. 626

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— Student ratings provide information (if published) to students about particular instructors and courses, which may increase the chances that excellence in instruction will be recognized and rewarded. (p. 111) Student rating forms may be standardized across classes or tailormade for certain classes or purposes. In some cases, teachers develop their own student rating forms to receive feedback on their performance in a particular class. At some institutions, there are optional formative class evaluations to be filled out by students at midterm and shared with the teacher alone. Often, though, students’ course ratings provide input for a summative evaluation process related to employment actions such as contract renewals, tenure, or promotion. In such cases, standardized departmental or institutional evaluation forms and procedures are necessary for comparability across classes and teachers. One type of institutional student evaluation form has a standard section related to the majority of courses with additional, optional items or sections that allow the instructor to select supplementary or diagnostic items from an institutional pool. In another format, multiple standard forms are made available, and each instructor chooses one of these to give students in individual classes. In other cases, all instructors and courses use the same general form for student evaluations. Sample forms provided by Aleamoni (1981) could be adapted for use in ESL contexts. Based on research on native-speaking college students, a wellknown authority on faculty evaluation, Aleamoni (1981, 1987), argues that the many concerns which teachers express about student evaluations of their teaching are unfounded. Though faculty believe that students’ judgments of teachers are inconsistent, Aleamoni (1987) cites evidence of their stability, even in the long-run, as studies show “a high positive relationship between the judgments made by students who had been away and those made by students who were currently taking the course” (p. 28). Aleamoni (1981, 1987) also presents evidence to counter the claim that student ratings are merely a “popularity contest,” arguing that students can discriminate between classroom manner and other aspects of teaching skill. He also found “close to zero correlation” (1987, p. 29) of student evaluations with student grades in courses. As a measure of their validity, Aleamoni (1981, 1987) cites a .70 correlation of student ratings with peer ratings of instructional effectiveness. Aleamoni (1987) uncovered “little or no relationship between such variables as class size, gender of the student or gender of the instructor, the time of day that the class is offered, the major or nonmajor status of the student, or the term or semester that the FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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course is offered and the way in which students rate a course or instructor” (pp. 28-29). While the relationship between faculty rank and student ratings was also found to be nonsignificant, the relationship between level of study and student ratings showed a consistent pattern: The lower the level of study, the lower the course tended to be rated. The implication of this finding is unclear for ESL, because the term level is difficult to apply; an individual student’s grade level, educational level, and level of proficiency may all differ. Another of Aleamoni’s (1987) findings, that “the higher the proportion of students taking the course as a requirement, the lower the overall rating” (p. 29), suggests that where ESL courses are required, they will receive comparably lower student evaluations than where they are offered as optional classes. With regard to student rating forms, Aleamoni (1987) notes that “these forms will be unreliable if they have not been professionally constructed and tested. However, . . . we can find a number of fairly reliable forms, with reliability of the total instrument measuring .90 and above” (p. 28). In his view, the validity of such forms is fairly well-established through research showing relatively high correlations with peer ratings (concurrent validity) and with objective measures of student learning (predictive validity). According to Aleamoni (1981), “Ratings on high-inference items [i.e., those requiring judgment and abstraction from the actual events observed] . . . have generally yielded higher correlations with instructor effects than the more specific, or low-inference, behavioral measures. But the information in low-inference measures is easier to use in instructional improvement programs. . .” (p. 119). Thus, high-inference response items in student evaluations of teachers seem preferable for summative purposes. Low-inference response items appear to be most valuable for formative purposes. A less standardized, more informal approach to evaluation of instruction by students is to form a committee of students who meet with an instructor on a regular basis to discuss the teaching in a course. These students can act as liaison between the rest of the class and the instructor, bringing to the attention of the teacher any complaints, compliments, suggestions, and other ideas that the students may have (Parent, Vaughan, & Wharton, 1971). This approach has the advantage of directly involving students in the evaluation process, letting them know that their observations of their teachers are being attended to. Moreover, the impermanence and relatively informal nature of this approach make studentteacher dialogue an effective means of receiving feedback on teaching performance on a regular basis and of using this feedback 628

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to change performance. However, this formative purpose can be compromised if dominant individuals bias the direction of the discussion, or if teacher or students feel threatened. Student ratings, if constructed and used properly, seem to offer relatively reliable and valid data in a faculty evaluation system. More informal types of teacher evaluation by students, such as the conversations described above, may be useful for formative purposes. As Aleamoni (1981), however, points out, there is a danger of the data from student evaluations being misinterpreted and misused: Without normative (or comparative) information, a faculty member might place inappropriate emphasis on selected student responses. If the results are published, the biases of the editor(s) might misrepresent the meaning of the ratings to both students and faculty. If administrators use the ratings for summative and punitive purposes only, the faculty will be unfairly represented. (p. 116) However, if student ratings and other less formal types of input are used in conjunction with other evaluation methods, they can provide valuable data for teacher evaluations. For formative purposes, student evaluations have been shown to improve instruction if used in conjunction with a consultant (Aleamoni, 1987; McKeachie, 1987) and an institutional system of support, training, and rewards (Stevens, 1987). Student evaluations of ESL teachers can thus best serve formative purposes if employed in a context of strong administrative support for faculty members, public rewards for outstanding performance, and opportunities for training to achieve continued growth as a language teaching professional. To what extent do these different approaches to student evaluation of instruction, and the findings of researchers regarding their reliability, validity, and effectiveness, apply to TESOL? As far as we are aware, there has been little attempt as yet to establish the reliability and validity of specific instruments for student evaluation of ESL teachers. It can be argued that approaches to student evaluation of instruction appropriate in some contexts might not be suitable for use with ESL students: Because of limitations of language or cultural inhibitions, these students may be unable or unwilling to communicate as freely as native speakers would in written or oral forms of faculty evaluation. It can also be argued that rating scales, frequently used for faculty evaluation, are of questionable validity when employed by those whose exposure to English and to the American educational and cultural context is limited. If student evaluations are to be used for summative FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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purposes in ESL faculty evaluation, the following guidelines are recommended: — The instruments and procedures should be constructed by evaluation specialists sensitive to the nature of the ESL context. — The instruments must provide opportunities for responses other than choices on rating scales. — Students need to be oriented to the content and purposes of the evaluation instruments and procedures. Until research establishes the reliability and validity of various instruments and procedures for student evaluation of instruction in ESL, we recommend special care in developing the student evaluation method for assessment in TESOL and in interpreting the data gained through student evaluations (Pennington & Young, in press). Student Achievement Some have argued that the logical basis for evaluating a teacher is the achievement of that teacher’s students—in particular, according to pretest-posttest measures. Medley ( 1982) describes this point of view: To the lay person the obvious way to evaluate a teacher is by measuring how much [students] learn from the teacher. There are plenty of precedents in other occupations. The salesman [sic] who does not sell is fired; the salesman who sells the most gets promoted or is given a trip to Hawaii. The television repairman is not entitled to be paid until he makes your set work again. Shouldn’t the teacher be discharged as incompetent unless [his/her students] achieve up to standard? (p. 10) However, research on the reliability of student test scores as a measure of teaching effectiveness has consistently indicated reliability to be quite low (Darling-Hammond, Wise, & Pease, 1983), as the same teacher might produce markedly different results in different situations (Brophy, 1970; Rosenshine, 1970). As Medley (1982) notes, variability in learning outcomes is not surprising if teachers are viewed as professionals who must deal with complex problems: To say that teacher competence should be assessed on the basis of [student] learning makes sense only if you regard the work of the teacher as sub-professional, as comparable to that of the salesman or the television repairman [sic]. If you regard the teacher as a professional, as one whose role is comparable to that of the physician or the attorney, it 630

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does not make sense. . . . It is recognized that the professional offers a service whose outcomes cannot be guaranteed; that s/he deals with problems which have no known solution as well as with ones that have known solutions, accepts hopeless cases as well as the hopeful ones. The sub-professional may (and should) be asked to deal only with problems s/he can solve. (p. 10) Medley, Coker, and Soar (1984) point out the problems of student variability, the regression effect (the fact that test scores tend toward the middle range), and the limitations of achievement tests presently available. Darling-Hammond, Wise, and Pease (1983) warn that judging teachers according to student achievement may cause teachers to “teach to the test” and inhibit curricular innovation. Where classroom goals are oriented toward communicative performance, it becomes particularly difficult to assess teaching effectiveness based either on the type of norm-referenced, discreteitem standardized test that is in widespread use in ESL today or on the newer, more communicatively oriented tests. (For reviews of ESL tests, see Alderson, Krahnke, & Stansfield, 1987. For discussion of issues surrounding achievement, proficiency, and mastery testing in ESL, see Bachman, 1989; and Hudson, 1989. ) Even if communicative tests are available, in situations where students are using the language regularly inside and outside of classes, it cannot be assumed that the teacher of one particular class is responsible for any gains (or lack of gains) made by the students on those tests. Improvements in a student’s language proficiency may or may not be related to the student’s performance or achievement in a particular class, and in many typical ESL situations, none of these measures of students’ progress can be directly and unequivocally traced to teaching behavior. In addition to teaching performance, Centra and Potter (1980) propose a variety of factors as influences upon student achievement and other learning outcomes: These include conditions within the school or the community, and the inherent characteristics of the students. Centra and Potter’s structural model, based on their review of research on student achievement in a general educational context, is shown in Figure 1. The components of this model are relevant to ESL programs in the public schools and elsewhere, as they indicate that teaching performance is only one in a host of factors predicting student learning. Within the area of teaching performance, Centra and Potter (1980) found a complex pattern of results related to student learning outcomes. The following are among their major findings: FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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FIGURE 1 Structural Model of School and Teacher Variables Influencing Student Learning Outcomes From “School and Teacher Effects An Interrelational ModeI” by J. A. Centra and D. A. Potter, 1980, Review of Educational Research, 50, p. 274. Copyright 1980 by the American Educational Research Association. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

— Teaching performances that correlated significantly with changes in learning were different by subject matter and by grade level; — There are no single teaching-performance variables which in themselves correlate so highly with student achievement that they should be considered critical for effective teaching; — Differences in patterns [emphasis added] of teaching performances accounted for differences in pupil learning. (p. 288) Interpreting these results for TESOL, the first finding suggests that teaching effectiveness may vary from one skill area or course level to the next. The second and third of the findings listed above suggest that different teaching behaviors are potentially effective in terms of student learning outcomes, though there might be an optimal pattern of behaviors. This in turn suggests that the evaluation of language teaching must involve high-inference categories (Richards, in press), and observation of teaching over a period of time, so that patterns of behavior can emerge. The research available on the relationship of teaching behaviors to learning outcomes in ESL (see Chaudron, 1988, pp. 154-179, for an overview) supports the notion that complex patterns of classroom behavior are associated with effective teaching and learning in second language contexts. Hence, in relation to ESL teaching performance, the evaluation of student achievement is a relatively complicated and long-term process requiring an evaluator with extensive knowledge of the complex factors involved in the teaching-learning process and of the ways in which these can be measured. Despite the claims of its proponents that data on student achievement are the only valid and relevant criteria for teaching success, this method of faculty evaluation remains an imperfect indicator of teacher competence (Quinto & McKenna, 1977). Millman (1981b) states, however, that while tests of achievement, considered as a broad category that includes a variety of measures—e.g., quizzes, homework assignments, and questions asked during instruction—would not be appropriate for summative purposes, they may be useful for formative purposes. Nonstandardized classroom tests may be used in course diagnosis and improvement by comparing test norms of previous classes with present student performance and pinpointing the items that fall below the mastery level. This information could be shared with the class “perhaps helping determine how much strong or weak learning is due to the instructor and how much to the students” (Doyle, 1983, p. 136). FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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Classroom Observation Traditionally, the observation method involved a program administrator or teacher supervisor observing a teacher in the classroom and then rating the teacher on a scale primarily for summative purposes, i.e., to determine salary, promotion, and other employment actions. The contemporary view of observation is research-based, seeing the supervisor as a collector of descriptive data on a predetermined aspect of the teacher’s performance (McGreal, 1983). Since the typical classroom is an extraordinarily complex arena, it is important that the observation be carefully planned and focused (Hyman, 1975). According to Goldhammer, Anderson, and Krajewski (1980), this planning is usually done in a preconference meeting between observer and teacher designed specifically to achieve the following goals: — To obtain information as to the teacher’s intentions (objectives of the lesson; planned procedures; criteria of evaluation). — To establish a “contract” or agreement between the supervisor and the teacher (items or problems on which the teacher wants feedback). — To establish specific plans for carrying out the observation (how supervisor should deploy [sic]; use of tape recorders or not; time limits), (p. 208) In establishing specific plans for carrying out the observation, Master (1983) offers some helpful rules of etiquette for the observer in an ESL context, to reduce the “inevitable ill effects of their presence” in the classroom. Drawing on Master’s rules, we offer the following suggestions: 1. Observe only after the teacher has had enough time to develop good rapport with students. 2. Arrive before the class begins, to allow some minimal contact with students and your introduction to the class before the lesson begins. 3. Sit in an inconspicuous place where you can see well what is going on, both with students and with teacher, generally at the side of the room, unless requested by the teacher to sit elsewhere. 4. Adopt a good “bedside manner” before, during, and after the observation; consciously work to be collegial and nonthreatening. 5. Avoid distractive behavior during the observation, such as frowning, moving about in your seat or making unnecessary noise. 634

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6. Be sure to leave the class with a smile on your face and to compliment the instructor and thank him or her for letting you come into the class. 7. In a postobservation meeting, discuss the class observed in a positive and supportive way. In addition to these guidelines for observation etiquette, we further recommend the following to help ensure a valid observation: 8. To ensure equivalent conditions of observation, classroom visits should be preplanned to occur on a specific date or within a certain period (e.g., one or two weeks), so that teachers can prepare themselves and their students for visitors. 9. Unless there is a need to participate in the class, it is desirable for the observer to be outside the action of the class. 10. The observer should resist the temptation to give any kind of verbal or nonverbal input or feedback during the observation, either to students or teacher. We disagree with Master (1983) and others who would allow unannounced visits for the purpose of teacher evaluation. In our view, the possibility of unannounced classroom visits by evaluators erodes the teacher’s authority and classroom autonomy. Such visits also undermine the students’ right and need to learn unimpeded as much as possible by outside influences and gainsay the unspoken contract that what students do in a classroom is not subject to unexpected inspection or analysis. Unannounced classroom visits are thus not only disruptive of the classroom process, but also represent a kind of invasion of privacy. We also disagree with those who would allow or encourage the observer to participate in the lesson or to serve as another resource or authority figure during the lesson. First of all, it is difficult or impossible to effectively fulfill both observer and participant roles simultaneously. Moreover, offering corrections or explanations, even if asked, changes the observer’s role and the dynamics of the class, thus to some extent invalidating the observation. Finally, we take exception to the view, as expressed by Master (1983) and others, that observers should not take many notes during the observation. For several reasons, detailed notes are valuable or necessary for documenting what went on in the class under observation. For experienced as well as inexperienced teachers, a summary description or general narrative written from memory after the observation will not suffice to document performance, whether for formative or summative purposes. FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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In a response to Master’s article, Zuck (1984) recommends some additional structure for a classroom observation that is tied to teacher evaluation. She suggests that the observer also inform the teacher what the standards of judgment will be, whether progress since a previous evaluation will be considered, and what form the feedback will take (e.g., checklist, narrative, or some combination of the two). The observer can view the class with a prepared form that guides the observation process, and later the feedback process, between observer and observed. Such forms will be of various types, depending on the purposes of the observation. (For sample forms, see Gudridge, 1980, pp. 43-44; Pennington & Young, in press. ) Following the observation, an appraisal interview is set up between observer and observed, and copies of evaluation forms or subsequent reports are made for the teacher and often also for a permanent file. If properly applied, the observation method has the advantage of allowing teachers to be evaluated “where they live” in their jobs, i.e., in the classroom. Thus, by the observation method, teachers are evaluated according to observable criteria and in terms of what may arguably be the most valid criterion for evaluation of practicing teachers, i.e., classroom performance. However, the observation method is often not properly applied, and even when it is, it is not without its flaws. Problems identified in the literature (Gudridge, 1980; Master, 1983; Redfern, 1972) include the following observer deficiencies: — The observer may use an inappropriately subjective standard for evaluating the class, or may be unclear as to the standards being applied. — The observer may be unaware of teacher constraints and student variables affecting the lesson. — The observer may not have expertise in the subject area being taught. — The observer may lack proper training in observation methods. — The observer may be hypercritical, or, conversely, lack critical ability and overpraise the teacher. Observer flaws represent one source of error in teacher evaluation by means of classroom observation. Another possible source of error in this type of evaluation is that the observation itself may represent an insufficient sampling of performance, in that it may not represent the teacher’s usual performance nor demonstrate 636

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a range of performance. Hence, one observation cannot provide a reliable and valid basis for evaluation. Many have noted that the unrepresentative class observed is just as likely to be an outstanding one as a poor one, as performance can improve because of the presence of an observer (the Hawthorne Effect). Often, however, the power differential implied between observer and observed affects performance in a negative way, as Master (1983) points out, and so invalidates the observation. This power differential can also lead to discomfort and personal animosity that may impede the evaluation process, preventing any teaching improvement from taking place; in the worst case, it may result in highly stressful and time-consuming personnel actions which impair the functioning of the administrator, the teacher, and the program as a whole. A reliable and valid observation procedure for ESL can therefore be established only by employing highly trained, sensitive observers who themselves have experience teaching in the types of classes observed, and who conduct a number of observations under comparable conditions in a variety of classes over a period of time. Peer Review Peer review usually occurs at the college or university level. “Its essential function is to guarantee that members of an academic community have control over their own standards, their own membership, and the future course of their disciplines” (FrenchLazovick, 1981, p. 73). In a typical peer review, a group of no less than three peers knowledgeable in the field of a candidate are asked to review that candidate’s dossier as part of their data collection on teaching merit, scholarship, and service to the field. Peer review might also involve observation and other forms of assessment of a colleague’s knowledge, accomplishments, skills, performance, or potential. Nunan (1988) advocates peer observation as a useful means of obtaining information about what is working and what is not in ESL classrooms. Nunan feels that the ideal is for two teachers who have mutual trust to observe and report on each other’s classes. Cederblom and Lounsbury (1980) summarize arguments in favor of peer review: Peers would seem in a natural position to provide reliable, valid evaluation of each other. First, they constitute several raters; second, because of their frequent, close contacts with each other, they see a large number of criterion-relevant behaviors; and third, they see behavior which the traditional evaluator (supervisor) may not see. (p. 568) FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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Commenting on peer review at elementary or secondary level, Brighton (1965) makes similar points, noting also that the ratings of peer groups of teachers correlate with those of administrators. However, faculty resistance may limit the utility of peer evaluations (Cederblom & Lounsbury, 1980) and invalidate this method of faculty evaluation to a greater or lesser extent. Drawing on critical discussion of peer review by Alfonso (1977), Brighton (1965, pp. 2223), Cederblom and Lounsbury (1980), Centra (1987, p. 49) and McGreal (1983, pp. 126-128), we see four potential problems with this method: 1. Future Relationship with Peers —Teachers may be reluctant to evaluate their colleagues for fear of damaging their working relationships. 2. Logistical Problems —Teachers may not wish to take the time and trouble to arrange peer observations and meetings. 3. Lack of Reliability— There is variability in judging performance, and evaluation instruments do not in themselves protect against prejudice and preconceptions. 4. Lack of Support— Teachers may not support the aims of the evaluation system and so may not make a serious effort in the evaluation process. Considering these potential problems, peer review would appear to be an inappropriate means of summative evaluation within a language program faculty. However, peer review has merit as part of the formative evaluation process for individual faculty members and for the program as a whole, as teachers work together toward the future improvement and evolution of the program and their own teaching (Pennington, 1989). “The key to effective peer [review] is to perceive and utilize this resource as one element in a systemwide effort, and as one component of a multilevel instructional supervisory team” (Alfonso, 1977, p. 601). If peer review is to be included in an ESL faculty evaluation system, the following steps are essential: — To provide faculty members with a positive, formative rationale for the peer review process. — To gain the support of faculty members for the aims and purposes of the review process and their cooperation in carrying it out. — To solve logistical problems so that teachers will be free to observe and will not feel that observation time is compromising their teaching or class preparation. 638

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— To offer initial and ongoing training in the conduct of the review process. Faculty Self-Evaluation In discussing the positive aspects of faculty self-evaluation, Brighton (1965) provides a three-part rationale that can be summarized as follows: 1. Academic freedom and professional recognition require individual teachers to share with their colleagues the responsibility for improving their own teaching performance. 2. Self-evaluation is regarded as the most acceptable form of evaluation by teachers who aspire to enhance their status as professionals. 3. Self-evaluation is the ultimate goal of any teacher evaluation program, for “the best and only effective motive for change is one that comes from within.” (p. 25) In the ESL context, Nunan (1988) advocates “the encouragement of self-analysis and evaluation by teachers of their own classroom work as a means of professional self-development. . . . Such selfevaluation, when tied to classroom action research, can also make valuable contributions to curriculum development” (p. 147). In implementing self-evaluation, Carroll (1981) discusses five major instruments: self-rating forms, self-reports, self-study material, observation of colleagues’ teaching, and videotape/audiotape feedback on one’s own teaching. Each of these instruments is reviewed below based on the discussion in Carroll (1981): Self-rating forms, according to current research, do not show very close agreement with the observations of students, peers, or administrators. However, research shows that self-ratings may be in agreement with the ratings of others when those ratings involve ranking one’s own performance against that of one’s colleagues. Self-ratings can uncover patterns in the instructor’s teaching behavior or characteristics that were not formerly recognized, or can identify certain unexpected discrepancies with other ratings. Self-reports usually have an open-ended format calling for concise answers to a number of questions related to instruction. Although research is lacking on the use and effects of the self-report as an evaluative technique, this type of instrument can serve teachers periodically as a device for taking stock of their aims, accomplishments, and shortcomings. Self-reports tend to yield a great deal more information about teaching than do rating scales, but this information may be more difficult to quantify. FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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Self-study materials are designed primarily for faculty members in higher education who may not have received formal training in educational psychology, pedagogy, or curriculum development. These instructors may feel a need for a program of self-study, initially to evaluate their individual teaching styles and then to investigate the teaching materials and techniques that they consider most appropriate for their continuing development. Typical self-study materials might contain modules on various skills, such as preparing lectures, conducting discussions, and constructing tests. Observation of colleagues, followed by comparison with oneself, may be done in various settings: team teaching, interdisciplinary courses or programs, faculty colloquiums, etc. Videotape/audiotape feedback offers the opportunity “to see (hear) ourselves as others see (hear) us” through video and/or audio recordings. The principal advantages of the different techniques of selfevaluation are the potential to (a) change teaching behavior (Allen, Barnes, Reece, & Robertson, 1970), (b) encourage a sense of responsibility and professionalism (Brighton, 1965), and (c) focus attention on long-term goals for the faculty member and for the program as a whole (Brown & Pennington, in press; Nunan, 1988). The chief drawbacks of this method are its lack of reliability and objectivity for purposes of summative evaluation. Paradoxically, as Brighton (1965) notes, self-evaluation may not always serve formative purposes well either, unless additional feedback is provided by a supervisor or peer, since insecure teachers tend to overrate themselves, and secure teachers tend to underrate themselves. Yet clearly, teachers who possess the skills needed to carefully examine and assess their own competence, performance, and effectiveness are in a better position to evaluate feedback, to implement changes, and to improve in these aspects of teaching than are those who lack self-evaluation skills. The conclusion to be drawn for ESL is that training in self-evaluation should be considered an essential component of professional education that will help to ensure the long-term career development of confident and responsible faculty members who are able and willing to (a) evaluate input on their professional skills and behavior and (b) expand competencies and alter teaching approach as circumstances dictate. STAGES OF FACULTY DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION The purposes and methods of faculty evaluation may differ, depending on the stage which has been reached in the faculty 640

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member’s career. Pennington (1989) describes a faculty careercycle divided into initial stages and advanced stages, each consisting of a series of four phases: training, exploring the curriculum, specializing, and expanding competencies. Medley (1982) describes five different teaching career points and argues for quite different evaluation goals at each: At one time or another, or for one purpose or another, attempts have been made to evaluate teachers at each of these points. Since very different characteristics are assessable at each, which point teachers should be assessed at depends very much on the purpose for which the assessment is made; making the assessment at the point appropriate to the purpose for which it will be used is critically important. (p. 5) In Medley’s conception, an initial assessment of competencies can be made while the future teacher is still a student. “Some of the characteristics that can be measured at that time will persist unchanged and will eventually have an impact on the [students] whom the [future teacher] encounters” (Medley, 1982, p. 5). If any competencies are required on entry to a teacher education program, Medley believes that these should be assessed at this first career point, rather than waiting until the teacher training program is completed and then denying the candidate certification. Teacher competence (as a set of individual competencies such as lesson planning, communication skills, and ability to solve professional problems) may be most directly addressed at the point following the teacher training experience, but preceding the beginning of an actual teaching job. This is Medley’s evaluation point two. As Medley argues, the only agency that should logically perform the “gatekeeping” function of assessing “the competence of the individual teacher before admitting that teacher to professional practice is the institution that trains the teacher” (p. 39). The implication for TESOL is that the authority for certification of teacher competence in this field should rest with degree or certificate programs in TESOL or applied linguistics, rather than with state or national certifying bodies. At Medley’s third evaluation point, teacher performance is assessed on the basis of the behavior of the teacher during instruction. In our view, teacher performance at this stage of faculty development might logically be assessed by supervisory and peer observations, as well as by student evaluations. Such an assessment would be formative, seeking to determine the best fit between teacher and curriculum and to offer advice for fine-tuning teaching performance to meet the needs of the program and the students. At the fourth evaluation point, teacher effectiveness is judged on FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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the basis of the quality of the learning experiences provided by the teacher for the students. Peer review of lesson plans, materials, and classroom performance would seem most appropriate at this assessment point, as would questions in student evaluations addressing students’ perceptions of the quality of their learning experience. Medley’s fifth evaluation point is that at which the outcome of instruction is assessed by a comparison of test results and other measures of student achievement before and after instruction. For the reasons stated above, student achievement generally does not provide a sound basis for summative evaluation of individual faculty members, though it can yield valuable information for assessing the effectiveness of a program’s curriculum. This measure is certainly not appropriate for the novice teacher and, if used at all, must be applied only after a teacher has had several years of experience in a particular teaching situation. CONCLUSION Considering the potential drawbacks to the methods of faculty evaluation described above, one might be tempted to advocate abandoning the notion of faculty evaluation for ESL, or simply allowing individual teachers to take responsibility for evaluating themselves. These are not, however, realistic options, as Millman (1981b) points out: Teaching is too important to too many to be conducted without a critical inquiry into its worth. . . . The protection of [students’] rights and the fulfillment of responsibility require that teacher self-assessment be supplemented by evaluation by others. (p. 12) The viability of a profession rests on the credibility of its practices and its practitioners. Thus, it is the responsibility of ESL teacher educators and other members of the TESOL profession to ensure basic standards of instructional quality. Moreover, the viability of individual ESL programs is tied in no small measure to the capabilities of the teachers in those programs. Consequently, the evaluation of teachers will no doubt continue to be of central concern to ESL teacher educators and administrators, as well as to teachers themselves. Because of the importance of faculty evaluation to TESOL as a profession and to individual programs, and because of the sensitive issues that surround the evaluation enterprise, it is critical that those charged with evaluating ESL teachers or future teachers be aware 642

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of the many and varied sources of error, negativity, and unproductivity associated with faculty evaluation. It is, furthermore, the responsibility of those charged with directing faculty evaluation efforts to actively seek ways to counteract the drawbacks of different evaluation methods and to improve both their own ability and the ability of others to carry out the evaluation process fairly and consistently. In order to avoid or minimize the pitfalls uncovered in the foregoing review of the literature on faculty evaluation, we perceive a need within ESL for the following measures: 1. New instruments and procedures for faculty evaluation, and research on their effects and effectiveness 2. Sensitivity of evaluators to the contextual factors affecting teaching 3. Variety in methods and sources of input to faculty evaluation 4. Active involvement by teachers in the evaluation process 5. A developmental focus for evaluation integrated within a larger system of career development 6. Training in the evaluation process for teachers and administrators 7. Increased attention by teacher education programs to the gatekeeping function Through a better understanding of the complexities surrounding evaluation methods, and through the adoption of measures to minimize their negative effects, the field of TESOL can begin to evolve coherent, productive approaches to faculty evaluation that will further the goals of the profession.

THE AUTHORS Martha C. Pennington holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of English as a Second Language, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Aileen L. Young holds an MA in English as a Second Language from the Department of English as a Second Language, University of Hawaii at Manoa. She teaches at the Hawaiian Missionary Academy and was formerly employed by the Honolulu public schools.

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REFERENCES Alderson, J. C., Krahnke, K. J., & Stansfield, C. W. (Eds. ). (1987). Reviews of English language proficiency tests. Washington, DC: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Aleamoni, L. M. (1981). Student ratings in instruction. In J. Millman (Ed.), Handbook of teacher evaluation (pp. 110-145). Beverly Hills: Sage. Aleamoni, L. M. (1987). Typical faculty concerns about student evaluation of teaching. In L. M. Aleamoni (Ed.), Techniques for evaluating and improving instruction (pp. 25-31 ). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Alfonso, R. (1977). Will peer supervision work? Educational Leadership, 33, 594-601. Allen, P. M., Barnes, W. D., Reece, J. L., & Robertson, E. W. (1970). Teacher self-appraisal: A way of looking over your own shoulder. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Armstrong, H. R. (1972). A teacher’s guide to teaching performance evaluation. Worthington, OH: School Management Institute. Bachman, L. F. (1989). The development and use of criterion-referenced tests of language ability in language program evaluation. In R. K. Johnson (Ed.), The second language curriculum (pp. 242-258). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brighton, S. (1965). Increasing your accuracy in teacher evaluation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Brophy, J. E. (1970). Stability in teacher effectiveness. American Educational Research Journal, 10, 252-254. Brown, J. D., & Pennington, M. C. (in press). Developing effective evaluation systems for language programs. In M. C. Pennington (Ed.), Evaluation of English language programs and personnel. Washington, DC: National Association for Foreign Student Affairs. Carroll, J. G. (1981). Faculty self-evaluation. In J. Millman (Ed.), Handbook of teacher evaluation (pp. 180-200). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Cederblom, D., & Lounsbury, J. (1980). An investigation of useracceptance of peer evaluations. Personnel Psychology, 33, 567-579. Centra, J. A. (1987). Formative and summative evaluation: Parody or paradox? In L. M. Aleamoni (Ed.), Techniques for evaluating and improving instruction (pp. 47-55). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Centra, J. A., & Potter, D. A. (1980). School and teacher effects: An interrelational model. Review of Educational Research, 50, 273-291. Chaudron, C. (1988). Second language classrooms: Research on teaching and learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Copeland, W. D. (1982). Student teachers’ preference for supervisory approach. Journal of Teacher Education, 33 (2), 32-36. Darling-Hammond, L., Wise, A. E., & Pease, S. R. (1983). Teacher evaluation in the organizational context. Review of Educational Research, 53, 285-328. Delamere, T. (1986). On the supervision and evaluation of instruction. System, 14, 327-333. Doyle, K. O., Jr. (1983). Evaluating teaching. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath. 644

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Eisenberg, T. E., & Rudner, L. M. (1988). State testing of teachers: A summary. Journal of Teacher Education, 29 (4), 21-22. Eskey, D. (1982). Faculty. In R. P. Barrett (Ed.), The administration of intensive English language programs (pp. 39-44). Washington, DC: National Association for Foreign Student Affairs. Freeman, D. (1982). Observing teachers: Three approaches to in-service training and development. TESOL Quarterly, 16, 21-28. French-Lazovick, G. (1981). Peer review: Documentary evidence. In J. Millman (Ed.), Handbook of teacher evaluation (pp. 73-89). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Gebhard, J. G. (1984). Models of supervision: Choices. TESOL Quarterly, 18, 501-514. Goldhammer, R., Anderson, R., & Krajewski, R. (1980). Clinical supervision (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Gudridge, B. (1980). Teacher competency: Problems and solutions (American Association of School Administrators Critical Issues Report). Sacramento, CA: Education News Service. Haefele, D. L. (1978). The teacher perceiver interview: How valid? Phi Delta Kappan, 59, 683-684. Haefele, D. L. (1981). Teacher interviews. In J. Millman (Ed.), Handbook of teacher evaluation (pp. 41-57). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Hudson, T. (1989). Mastery decisions in program evaluation. In R. K. Johnson (Ed.), The second language curriculum (pp. 259-269). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hyman, R. (1975). School administrator’s handbook of teacher supervision and evaluation methods. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Master, P. (1983). The etiquette of observing. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 497-501. McGreal, T. L. (1983). Successful teacher evaluation. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. McKeachie, W. J. (1987). Can evaluating instruction improve teaching? In L. M. Aleamoni (Ed.), Techniques for evaluating and improving instruction (pp. 1-7). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Medley, D. M. (1982). Teacher competency testing and the teacher educator. Charlottesville, VA: Association of Teacher Educators and the Bureau of Educational Research, School of Education, University of Virginia. Medley, D. M., Coker, H., & Soar, R. S. (1984). Measurement-based evaluation of teacher performance. New York: Longman, Millman, J. (1981a). Introduction. In J. Millman (Ed.), Handbook of teacher evaluation (pp. 12-13). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Millman, J. (1981 b). Student achievement as a measure of teacher competence. In J. Millman (Ed.), Handbook of teacher evaluation (pp. 146-166). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Muller, G. D. (1978). In defense of the teacher perceiver. Phi Delta Kappan, 59, 684-685. FACULTY EVALUATION FOR ESL

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Nunan, D. (1988). The learner-centred curriculum. C a m b r i d g e : Cambridge University Press. O’Connell, W. R., Jr., & Smartt, S. S. (1979). lmproving faculty evaluation: A trial in strategy. Atlanta, GA: Southern Regional Education Board. Parent, E. R., Vaughan, C. E., & Wharton, K. (1971). A new approach to course evaluation. Journal of Higher Education, 42, 133-138. Pennington, M. C. (1989). Faculty development for language programs. In R. K. Johnson (Ed.), The second language curriculum (pp. 91-110). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pennington, M. C., & Young, A. L. (in press). Procedures and instruments for faculty evaluation in ESL. In M. C. Pennington (Ed.), Evaluation of English language programs and personnel. Washington, DC: National Association for Foreign Student Affairs.’ Quinto, F., & McKenna, B. (1977). Alternatives to standardized testing. Washington, DC: National Education Association. Quirk, T. J., Witten, B. J., & Weinberg, S. F. (1973). Review of studies of the concurrent and predictive validity of the National Teacher Examinations. Review of Educational Research, 43, 89-113. Redfern, G. B. (1972). How to evaluate teaching, Worthington, OH: School Management Institute. Richards, J. C. (in press). The dilemma of teacher education in TESOL. In D. Nunan & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Teacher preparation for language programs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenshine, B. (1970). The stability of teacher effects upon student achievement. Review of Educational Research, 40, 647-662. Stevens, J. J. (1987). Using student ratings to improve instruction. In L. M. Aleamoni (Ed.), Techniques for evaluating and improving instruction (pp. 33-38). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Thorne, G. S., Scott, C. S., & Beaird, J. J. (1976). Assessing faculty performance; Final project report. Monmouth, OR: Teaching Research Division, Oregon State System of Higher Education. Zuck, J. G. (1984). The dynamics of classroom observation: Evening the odds. TESOL Quarterly, 18, 337-344.

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Metacognitive Strategy Training for ESL Reading PATRICIA L. CARRELL University of Akron

BECKY G. PHARIS and JOSEPH C. LIBERTO Southern Illinois University

Recent research in second language reading has focused on metacognition, literally, cognition of cognition. These studies investigate metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and the relationships among perception of strategies, strategy use, and reading comprehension. Strategy research suggests that less competent learners may improve their skills through training in strategies evidenced by more successful learners. Relatively little research on metacognitive strategy training has been done in a second language context or, more specifically, in second language reading. This article reports a study of metacognitive strategy training for reading in ESL. Strategy training was provided to experimental groups. Control groups received no strategy training, but participated in pre- and posttesting. Several research questions are addressed: “Does metacognitive strategy training enhance L2 reading?” If so, “Does one type of strategy training facilitate L2 reading better than another?” “How is the effectiveness of metacognitive strategy training related to the learning styles of the students?” Results show that metacognitive strategy training is effective in enhancing second language reading, and that the effectiveness of one type of training versus another may depend upon the way reading is measured. Further, our results show that the effectiveness of the training is related to differences in the learning styles of the students.

The current explosion of research in second language reading has begun to focus on, among other things, readers’ strategies. In the same way that an investigation of speakers’ communicative strategies reveals the ways in which speakers manage oral communication, comprehension, input, and thus, ultimately, acquisition (Faerch & Kasper, 1983; Wenden & Rubin, 1987), 647

reading strategies are of interest for what they reveal about the way readers manage their interactions with written text, and how these strategies are related to reading comprehension. Several empirical investigations have been conducted into reading strategies and their relationships to successful and unsuccessful second language reading (Hauptman, 1979; Devine, 1984; Hosenfeld, 1977; Knight, Padron, & Waxman, 1985; Block, 1986; Sarig, 1987). More recent research has begun to focus on metacognition, literally, cognition of cognition. These studies investigate metacognitive awareness of, or perceptions about, strategies and the relationships among awareness or perception of strategies, strategy use, and reading comprehension (Waxman & Padron, 1987; Padron & Waxman, 1988; Barnett, 1988; Carrell, 1989a). Strategy research suggests that less competent learners are able to improve their skills through training in strategies evidenced by more successful learners. The same is true of reading strategies: Less competent readers are able to improve through training in strategies evidenced by more successful readers. Relevant research on strategy training has been conducted in first language reading by Brown and Palincsar (1982), among others. With only a few exceptions (O’Malley, 1987; Carrell, 1985; Padron, 1985; Sarig & Folman, 1987), relatively little metacognitive strategy training research has been done in a second language context, or more specifically, in second language reading. This article reports a metacognitive strategy training study of reading in English as a second language. It is designed to address the following research questions: “Does metacognitive strategy training enhance L2 reading?” If so, “Does one type of strategy training facilitate L2 reading better than another?” “How is the effectiveness of metacognitive strategy training related to the learning styles of the students?” STRATEGIES AND STRATEGY TRAINING RESEARCH Imagine that you have been assigned to read the passage shown in Figure 1 (one of our training passages) about nutrients in food. What would you do to ensure that you understood the material? How would you choose to process the information? What recommendations would you make to help a reader who does not understand the passage? What happens when you ask a reader to skim or scan, to take notes on, underline or reread the passage, to try to identify the rhetorical structure of the passage, to guess unknown words from context, or skip them and tolerate the vagueness and 648

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FIGURE 1 Sample Training Passage

NUTRIENTS IN FOOD Nutrients are parts of food that are important for life and health. Nutrients are important for three reasons. First, some nutrients provide fuel for energy. Second, some nutrients build and repair body tissues. Third, some nutrients help control different processes of the body like the absorption of minerals and the clotting of blood. Scientists think there are 40 to 50 nutrients. These nutrients are divided into five general groups: carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals, and vitamins. The first group of nutrients is carbohydrates. There are two kinds of carbohydrates: starches and sugars. Bread, potatoes, and rice are starches. They have many carbohydrates. Candy, soft drinks, jelly, and other foods with sugar also have carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are important because they provide the body with heat and energy. Sugar, for instance, is 100 percent energy. It has no other food value. Sugar does not build body tissues or control body processes. If there are too many carbohydrates in the body, they are stored as body fat. The body stores fuel as fat. There are two types of fats: animal and vegetable. Butter, cream, and the fat in bacon are animal fats. Olive oil, corn oil, and peanut oil are vegetable fats. The body has fat under the skin and around some of the organs inside. The average adult has 10 to 11 kilograms (20 to 25 pounds) of body fat. If adults eat too many carbohydrates and fats, they can add another 45 kilograms (100 pounds) to their bodies. Fat is extra fuel. When the body needs energy, it changes the fat into carbohydrates. The carbohydrates are used for energy. Fat also keeps the body warm. The third group of nutrients is proteins. The word “protein” comes from a Greek word that means “of first importance.” Proteins are “of first importance” because they are necessary for life. Proteins are made of. .

ambiguity? These are all questions about reading strategies and their effectiveness in the process of reading and of learning from reading. The purpose of this article is twofold: (a) to explore the question of how reading strategies can be taught most effectively, and (b) to examine the influence of reading strategies on the process of learning to read, so that one might learn from reading in English as a second language. Traditionally, reading instruction has involved either direct instruction of decoding skills or informal teaching of comprehension. However, according to Resnick (1979), those who advocate a heavy emphasis on decoding mechanisms in reading also tend toward the direct-instruction approach, whereas those who emphasize attention to language processing and reading for meaning, i.e., comprehension, tend to advocate and adopt learnerdirected, informal instructional approaches. Yet, as Resnick has also argued, there is no reason in principle why one cannot have direct instruction in comprehension, or—perhaps harder to imagine— informal instruction in decoding. Our concern in this article is with METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING FOR ESL READING

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the former, that is, relatively direct or explicit instruction in comprehension. Of particular concern is the direct, explicit instruction in comprehension-fostering strategies. As Brown, Armbruster, and Baker (1986) have argued, “metacognition plays a vital role in reading” (p. 49). The term metacognition refers to one’s understanding of any cognitive process. Metacognition in the context of reading is usually understood to consist of two types of cognition: first, one’s knowledge of strategies for learning from texts, and, second, the control readers have of their own actions while reading for different purposes. Successful readers monitor their reading and the state of their learning; they plan strategies, adjust effort appropriately, and evaluate the success of their ongoing efforts to understand (Brown, Armbruster, & Baker, 1986, p. 49). Metacognitive control, in which the reader consciously directs the reasoning process, is a particularly important aspect of strategic reading. When readers are conscious of the reasoning involved, they can access and apply that reasoning to similar reading in future situations. However, comprehension instruction does not always provide students with enough explicit information to enable them to assume metacognitive control (Duffy, Roehler, & Herrmann, 1988). The literature on the direct instruction of reading comprehension strategies in first language reading (e.g., Brown, Campione, & Day, 1981; Brown, 1981; Brown & Palincsar, 1982; Cook & Mayer, 1983; Brown, Palincsar, & Armbruster, 1984) has shown such an approach to “yield consistently positive results” (Winograd & Hare, 1988, p. 121). As previously mentioned, relatively little of this metacognitive strategy training research has been conducted in second language reading, with Padron (1985), Carrell (1985), and Sarig and Folman (1987) among the few exceptions. Our purpose was to add to the knowledge in this area by undertaking a study of metacognitive strategy training for second language reading that specifically focused on training in two reading strategies: semantic mapping, and the experience-text-relationship method. Semantic Mapping Research has indicated that readers’ formal schemata, or background knowledge about text structure, affect reading comprehension (e.g., Mandler, 1978; Meyer, 1975; Carrell, 1984a, 1984b). Related to this work is a growing body of research demonstrating that instruction in text structure facilitates learning from text. In this instruction, a variety of text mapping techniques have been used, with consistently positive results (Bartlett, 1978; Reutzel, 1985; 650

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Geva, 1983; Armbruster, Anderson, & Ostertag, 1986; Carrell, 1985). One of the instructional techniques successful in first language reading is semantic mapping (S M), a term which “embraces a variety of strategies designed to display graphically information within categories related to a central concept” (Johnson, in the foreword to Heimlich & Pittelman, 1986, p. v). In other words, categories and associations are indicated visually in a diagram or “map.” In addition to being effective for vocabulary development, semantic mapping has proved to be a good alternative to traditional prereading and postreading activities. In this application, semantic mapping can be used not only to introduce the key vocabulary from the passage to be read, but also to provide the teacher with an assessment of the students’ prior knowledge, or schema availability, on the topic. While the semantic mapping procedure may vary according to individual teacher objectives, the procedure generally includes a brainstorming session in which students verbalize associations on a topic or key concept as the teacher writes them on the board. The teacher then facilitates the students’ discussion to organize or categorize the associations into the form of a map. This phase of the semantic mapping procedure activates the students’ prior knowledge of the topic, and helps them to focus on the relevant content schema, thereby better preparing them to understand, assimilate, and evaluate the information in the material to be read. Students develop a map of the story’s topic before reading, both to learn the key vocabulary necessary for comprehension and to activate their prior knowledge bases of that topic. The semantic mapping exercise motivates students to read the selection, while also providing the teacher with an assessment tool. After the students have finished reading, a discussion of the semantic map can be refocused to emphasize the main ideas presented in the written material. Students can then also expand their maps through class discussion, and learn to build bridges between the known and the new. As a postreading activity, semantic mapping affords students the opportunity to recall, organize, and represent graphically the pertinent information read (Heimlich & Pittelman, 1986). See Figure 2 for examples of preand postreading semantic maps (on the topic of sharks) constructed by an L1 class of eighth graders. For further references on semantic mapping, see Johnson, Pittelman, and Heimlich (1986); Sinatra, Stahl-Gemake, and Berg (1984); Sinatra, Berg, and Dunn (1985); Sinatra, Stahl-Gemake, and Morgan (1986); Stahl and Vancil (1986). METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING FOR ESL READING

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FIGURE 2 Examples of Pre- and Postreading Semantic Maps

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From Semantic mapping: Classroom applications(pp. 32-33) by J. E. Heimlich and S. D. Pittelman, 1986, Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Reprinted with the permission of Joan Heimlich and the International Reading Association.

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Experience-Text-Relationship Method The experience-text-relationship (ETR) method is one of a variety of methods developed as a total reading program that emphasizes comprehension, i.e., reading for meaning. ETR not only explicitly takes into consideration the students’ prior background knowledge, but facilitates its role in the reading process (Barnitz, 1985, pp. 19, 22). It has been found to be useful with minority L1 students; Au (1979), for example, documents its effectiveness with children in Hawaii. This method, which uses discussion to link what the reader already knows to what will be encountered in the text, has essentially three simple steps: experience, text, and relationship. In the experience step, the teacher leads the students in discussion of their own knowledge or experiences that are related in some way to the passage to be read. This is important not only because the students activate any relevant prior background they may have and begin to relate it to the text to be read, but also because the experience step provides a motivation for reading the text. In the text step, the teacher has the students read short parts of the text, usually a page or two, asking them questions about the content after each section is read. In this step, the teacher may also need to correct any misunderstandings of the text evidenced by the students. In the final step, the relationship sequence, the teacher attempts to help the students draw relationships between the content of the text (as developed in the text step), and their outside experience and knowledge (as discussed in the experience step). In all three steps the teacher is attempting to model and to guide the students systematically through the cognitive processes related to understanding a written text. An important requirement of the ETR method is that the teacher be adept in leading the students to discover the correct answers for themselves, rather than telling them the answers directly. The goal of the method is to enable the students, who have had the processes modeled for them by the teacher, to use these same cognitive processes on their own. Like semantic mapping when used as a pre- and postreading activity, ETR has students activate appropriate prior background knowledge, read texts against the activated background knowledge, and, finally, relate information gained from the reading to prior background knowledge. Unlike semantic mapping, ETR does not attempt to organize the information (either prior to or after reading), nor does it attempt to have the students produce a visual learning adjunct such as a map. 654

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THE STUDY Pilot Phase The research design, as well as the materials and procedures, was pilot tested during the fall semester of 1988. Changes were made as needed, and the study was run in the spring of 1989. Subjects Subjects consisted of a heterogeneous group of 26 ESL students in Level 4 of the intensive program of the Center for English as a Second Language (CESL) at Southern Illinois University. Their native language backgrounds included Arabic (8), Japanese (5), Bahasa Malaysian (4), various African languages (4), Chinese (2), Greek (l), Spanish (l), and French (1). Of the 26 subjects, 17 were undergraduate students and 9 were graduate students; 19 were male, 7 were female. Ages ranged from 19-43, with 27 the average age. Their assignment to Level 4 was due to either the results of a placement test (TOEFL scores in the range of 470-524), or to their advancement from previous study at Level 3. Subjects were in four intact reading classes: nine in the class that received the semantic mapping training, nine in the class that received the ETR training, and three and five, respectively, in the classes that functioned as the control group.2 Although their assignment to any of these four classes was arbitrary, we had no control over these matters, and, therefore, make no claims to randomness in the assignment of subjects to treatments. Training Procedures and Materials One teacher taught both training classes; another teacher taught the control group. Since the control group was simply to take the pre- and posttests, and otherwise received the usual CESL Level 4 reading curriculum, it was felt that having a different teacher in this class was not consequential; what was important was that we have the same teacher in the two training classes. In total the training period was four days, with both training 1 Students

did not list native languages. Countries of origin were Zaire (2), the Congo (1), the Central African Republic (1). 2 The first time the experiment was run, only three control subjects took both pre- and posttests. Therefore, a second control group was run, of whom five took both pre- and posttests. Since the control groups received no specialized training, and merely took the pre- and posttests, data are reported on the eight control subjects as though they constituted

a single control class.


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groups spending the same amount of time on any given passage. During this period, the control group worked on materials suggested by the language center’s syllabus (described below). For the two experimental groups, three reading passages of appropriate reading level were selected. “Culture Shock” (approximately 1,200 words) was selected (from Baudoin, Bober, Clarke, Dobson, & Silberstein, 1988; adapted from O’Berg, 1972) for its ease of reading and its high interest value; “Nutrients in Food” (approximately 800 words) was selected (from Sonka, 1981) for its detail and easy-tosee structure; and “Stress” (approximately 1,500 words and more complex than the other two passages) was selected (from Saitz, Dezell, & Stieglitz, 1984; reprinted from “Situational Stresses,” and “Biological Stresses”) for its length and organization. In the semantic mapping group, on the first day, the students and teacher discussed the meaning of the term culture shock. T h e following questions were used to stimulate discussion: (a) What are some of the problems that you, or people you know, have had since arriving in the U.S. to study? (b) How did these problems come about? (c) What can be done (or was done) to alleviate these problems? As ideas were brought up, they were written on the blackboard. Following the suggestions of the students, the ideas were then organized into a semantic map. The organization of the map was discussed in terms of the relationship between the topic, main and subcategories, supporting details, and new vocabulary. The students showed particular interest in the possibility of learning new vocabulary in the context of a subject domain, rather than depending merely on sentence or paragraph context. The students copied the prereading map from the blackboard. They were asked to read the passage “Culture Shock” and to expand the class map for homework. On the second day, the teacher and the class discussed the “Culture Shock” passage. Then one of the students went to the board and, gathering input from the rest of the class, developed a class postreading map. Figure 3 shows the class pre- and postreading maps. Pre- and postreading maps were discussed along with the notion that such maps are an external representation of an internal schema for processing new information. The same procedure was used to create a prereading map for “Nutrients in Food.” On the third day, after comparing pre- and postreading maps, the students brought up the idea that semantic mapping might be particularly useful for dealing with reading passages that contain a lot of details, but less suitable for passages whose meaning could be easily grasped without such elaboration. For the next assignment, 656

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FIGURE 3 Class Pre- and Postreading Maps

without any discussion of the new topic, the students were asked to make a semantic map on the topic of stress for homework. On what would have been the fourth day, the students had just handed in their maps when a bomb threat forced the evaluation of the building. After a brief reflection on the irony of such a stressful interruption, the students were given the “Stress” passage and asked to read it and make a postreading map. At the next class meeting, the article on stress was discussed, pre- and postreading maps compared, and the nature and uses of semantic mapping summarized. This concluded the training for the semantic mapping group. On the first day in the ETR group, discussion was begun by asking the students to name problems they (or someone they knew) had had in coming to or adjusting to the United States. These were listed on the blackboard. Working in groups of three or four, students then selected the five most important problems and rank ordered them. Students then began guided reading of the “Culture Shock” passage, reading short sections on their own, and, under the teacher’s guidance, stopping periodically to work through questions, relating ideas to the passage itself as well as to the earlier discussion of personal experiences. Reading was finished at home. Follow-up activities on the second day included comprehension questions, discussion questions, and vocabulary in context activities related to the passage. In the time remaining on the second day, as an introduction to the “Nutrients in Food” passage, students listed in chart form, on the board, a typical day’s dietary intake in their countries. These were compared for such features as similarities in food groups and nutritional content. Discussion followed concerning what constitutes a healthful diet, how different countries meet those requirements, and so on. Guided reading of the text was begun in class, with students assigned to finish the reading outside of class. Answering discussion questions and finding certain information in the article were among the follow-up activities. On the third day, to introduce the passage on stress, the main causes of stress at the language center and outside (in the U.S. and in the native country) were discussed, noting individual and cultural differences within the group. These were listed on the blackboard, but not mapped. Guided reading followed, relating information in the article to information on the blackboard. The fourth day involved further discussion of the “Stress” passage and a cloze test on a version of the passage, followed by discussion of the ETR process itself. This concluded the ETR training. 658

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During the semantic mapping and ETR training period, the control group worked with the usual materials that comprise the Level 4 reading syllabus at the language center. These include reading vocabulary and grammar exercises, such as vocabulary in context, discourse connectors, uses of punctuation, restatement, inference, speed-building passages, longer readings for comprehension and discussion, and so forth. The focus of these materials is on the various kinds of academic reading that college students encounter. Testing Procedures and Materials One day prior to the onset of the training, all subjects were given a pretest. Nine days later, immediately after the training, all subjects were given the same test as a posttest. The rationale for using exactly the same test for both pre- and posttesting was to assure exactly comparable tests, thus avoiding the problem of equating different forms of pre- and posttests. The nine-day interval between administrations was deemed long enough to control for any short-term memory effects; since subjects were not provided with the correct answers after the pretest, even were they to remember how they had answered a question the first time, they had no way of knowing whether that answer was correct. Further, the interval was considered short enough to control for any significant learning except for that due to the training. Moreover, any effects due to experience with the test would be comparable for each of the three groups. And, finally, one of the most common types of test reliability in psychometrics consists of such test-retest reliability. The test consisted of three passages, ranging from 302 to 333 words in length. The passages, drawn from popular writings or ESL source materials at the appropriate proficiency level of our subjects, were selected on the basis of their presumed interest to and readability by subjects: (a) “America” (316 words), about tourists’ impressions of America (from Yorkey, 1970); (b) “Cholesterol” (302 words), about good and bad cholesterol (from the pamphlet Cholesterol Control, 1985); and (c) “Malnutrition” (332 words), about the widespread incidence of malnourishment in the world and the symptoms of the two major types of malnutrition (from Nuttall, 1982; adapted from Chulalongkorn University Language Institute). Three forms of the test were constructed, with each of the three passages alternately appearing first, second, and last: METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING FOR ESL READING

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Form A: America, Cholesterol, Malnutrition Form B: Cholesterol, Malnutrition, America Form C: Malnutrition, America, Cholesterol Whatever form of the test subjects received for the pretest, that same form was received for the posttest. (A copy of Form A is included in the Appendix.) After each passage there were three multiple-choice comprehension questions: (a) a factual information or detail question, (b) a direct inference question, and (c) an indirect inference question.3 Multiple-choice questions were used as the most basic and common measure of reading comprehension. As in most such uses of multiple-choice questions, subjects were able to refer to the text when answering the questions, although the text was not on the same page, but on a preceding page. In addition, after each passage there were two open-ended, short answer questions. One of these inquired about the main idea of the passage or the author’s purpose, the other was a wh- question requiring subjects to draw together and generalize information from disparate parts of the passage. It was felt that these open-ended questions should tap deeper levels of information processing. In addition, after each of the first two passages in each form of the test, a partial semantic map was set up to be completed much like a cloze test. Figure 4 shows one of the cloze semantic maps from the test. Directions to subjects included an example of how to complete such a map. Although subjects were not receiving training in producing cloze semantic maps, but rather in creating semantic maps from scratch, the cloze semantic map was included as a potentially more direct measure of the semantic mapping strategy. 3 The

following were the principles which guided the construction of the multiple choice questions: (a) Specific information or detail questions asked about specific information or details of the passage, the answers to which could he found directly in a specific part of the passage, possibly paraphrased. (b) Direct inference questions required the reader to make a direct inference, i.e., draw a logical implication from information presented in the passage. For example, one of the passages had a chain of causes and effects as follows: “(LDL causes plaque), plaque blocks the arteries, this impairs blood flow and can lead to heart attack, stroke, and death.” From this the reader was to logically, directly infer [by reversing the causeeffect relationship] that “people can have a heart attack and even die if the arteries are blocked with plaque.” (c) Indirect inference question. required the reader to make an indirect inference, i.e., draw a conclusion which, while not following logically from the passage, nonetheless follows given the context and the requisite background knowledge of the content. For example, one of the passages contained the statement “the most common complaint of all was . . . .” From this the reader was required to draw the inference that “the most negative impression was . . . .”

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FIGURE 4 Sample Cloze Map from Pre- aod Posttest Complete the diagram. 5. Fill in the blanks with information from the preceding passage.

Finally, after the last passage in each form of the test, subjects were asked to construct their own map, using the cloze maps from the previous two passages as samples. Obviously, in the pretest, all groups were equally ignorant of how to do this, and could use only the cloze maps accompanying the other two passages as guides. In the posttest, our expectation was that this item would be a direct measure of the training received by the semantic mapping group. Also, because of the potential interaction between the two training treatments (semantic mapping and the ETR method) and the students’ own cognitive or learning styles, it was felt that a measure of learning style should be taken and the interaction between learning style and training treatment tested. Learning Styles: The Inventory of Learning Processes Research into the training of learning strategies has frequently been flawed by failing to consider individual differences between learners. Schmeck (1988) has suggested that “learning strategies METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING FOR ESL READING

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training and research programs should routinely include individual difference measures . . . to study and take advantage of interactions between personal attributes and the treatments used in training” (p. 171). Therefore, this study attempted to take into account individual differences among students in cognitive or learning styles, anticipating a potential interaction between the students’ own cognitive or learning styles and the two training treatments (semantic mapping and the ETR method). The Inventory of Learning Processes (ILP), constructed by Schmeck, Ribich, and Ramanaiah (1977), was used to measure subjects’ learning styles. Before the ILP was administered, students read a passage on the topic of learning styles, then took part in a class discussion on the topic. This served to make the inventory seem a natural follow-up to this class reading, as well as to lower any potential anxiety or apprehension about its possibly being an intelligence test, or that there were any “wrong” or “right” answers. The ILP questionnaire, consisting of 62 true-false items, is divided into four subscales or factors. The first, originally labeled “synthesis-analysis” and later renamed “deep processing,” assesses “the extent to which students critically evaluate, conceptually organize, and compare and contrast the information they study” (Schmeck, 1983, p. 245). The second factor, called “elaborative processing,” provides information about the tendency of an individual to personalize information. The third factor, “fact retention,” signifies the tendency of a person to memorize information. The last factor, “methodological study,” represents the degree to which a student engages in regular and drill-type study behavior. Scores are calculated as the number of responses on each subscale in the keyed (T or F) direction (e.g., deep vs. shallow). Numbers of items on each subscale vary. All four of the subscales are not independent. In particular, the deep and elaborative processing scales of the ILP are not independent. Because research into learning processes (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Craik & Tulving, 1975) suggests that both are effective strategies for understanding and retaining information, we decided to focus on these two subscales. We felt they might be closely related both to reading comprehension and to the two types of strategy training we were conducting. Subjects with different learning styles might process information differently and benefit from different kinds of training. Recall that each of the two training methods attempts to enhance student reading comprehension in a different way. Semantic mapping trains students to categorize and organize information, both prior information as well as information in the passage, whereas the ETR method asks students to activate 662

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their personal knowledge to improve comprehension of the text without their categorizing or organizing that information. Persons high on the deep processing scale are good at abstracting, comparing, and contrasting information. Therefore, we would expect them to comprehend texts well. In the case of L1 research, Schmeck (1980) and Schmeck and Phillips (1982) were indeed able to find significant correlations between scores on the deep processing scale and the vocabulary and comprehension subscales of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test and the Iowa Silent Reading Test. Persons high on the deep processing scale might be expected to benefit most from the training in semantic mapping. Other first language studies demonstrate that subjects with high scores on the elaborative scale are high in academic achievement (Schmeck & Grove, 1979) and outperform those who are low on the scale in free recall of adjectives (Schmeck & Meier, 1984). With respect to reading, however, results have been contradictory. Whereas Schmeck (1980) did not find a correlation between scores on the elaborative scale and the vocabulary and comprehension subscales of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test, Schmeck and Phillips (1982) did find a significant correlation between scores on the elaborative scale and reading comprehension as assessed by the Iowa Silent Reading Test. Persons high on elaborative processing might be expected to benefit most from training in the ETR method. Thus, we used the ILP to explore any potential interactions between our two metacognitive strategy training treatments— semantic mapping and ETR—and subjects’ individual differences in learning style. Scoring Each pre- and posttest was scored by two judges working independently. Discrepancies were resolved by a third judge. The nine multiple-choice questions were scored as correct or not, with a possible maximum total of 9. The two cloze semantic maps were scored as percentages of possible correct responses to the numbered blank spaces provided, with a possible maximum total of 100. The six open-ended questions were each scored on a three-point scale of how well the student’s answer demonstrated understanding of the passage, with a possible maximum total of 18: 3 Answer must be in student’s own words and demonstrate a fundamental, deep understanding of the passage; METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING FOR ESL READING

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2 Answer may or may not be in student’s own words, but must demonstrate some understanding of the passage; 1 Answer may or may not be in student’s own words, but fails to demonstrate an understanding of the passage; 0 Answer is devoid of content, or not related to the question or passage, or is simply wrong. (Carrell, 1989b) The one open-ended semantic map was scored on a three-point scale based on completeness and fit to the passage, as well as on how well the map demonstrated the student’s understanding of the passage, with a possible maximum total score of 3: 3 2 1

0

•

Map is relatively complete and shows clearly that student has understood the passage; Map is somewhat complete, and what is there demonstrates that the student has some understanding of the passage; Map is quite or relatively incomplete, and what is there does not demonstrate that the student has really understood the passage; Map is devoid of any meaningful content, or does not go with the passage; Missing, nothing provided. (Carrell, 1989b)

Statistical Analyses and Reliability Statistical analyses were performed on an IBM 3081 mainframe computer at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale using the SAS package of statistical programs and the General Linear Models procedures. 4 An alpha level of .05 was established for significance. Significant results have the exact probabilities reported; nonsignificant results are indicated with ns. Interrater reliabilities in scoring the open-ended questions, the cloze semantic maps, and the open-ended maps were as follows: Open-ended questions: r = .91 Cloze semantic maps: r = .98 Open-ended semantic maps: r = .81 Reliability in scoring the multiple-choice questions and the ILP was, obviously, 100%. GLM procedure does not produce traditional ANOVA tables. Instead, it produces Fvalues and p-values for each main effect and interaction.

4 The

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RESULTS Our basic results are reported in Table 1, which shows that the control group did not have significant gain scores between their pre- and posttests on any of the four dependent measures, whereas each training group showed significant gain scores on two of the four dependent measures. Thus, in answer to our first research question, it appears that metacognitive strategy training does enhance L2 reading when compared to nonstrategy training, as in the control group. TABLE 1 Gain Score Means for Training Groups

Table 1 further shows that neither of the two training groups gained significantly on the multiple-choice questions, the most common measure of reading comprehension. Thus, either our training was not effective enough to be reflected by this common reading measure, or, as we suspect, the measure was not sufficiently sensitive to detect the training effects. Table 1 also shows that both strategy training groups gained significantly on the open-ended questions. Presumably open-ended questions more directly reflect a student’s mental processing of textual information than do multiplechoice questions, and while students may get multiple-choice questions correct for the wrong reasons, this is less likely to occur with open-ended questions. Thus, the open-ended questions appear to have been particularly sensitive in measuring the facilitating effects of both strategy training treatments. Interestingly, Table 1 also shows that the ETR group made the only significant gain on the cloze semantic map items. Because the METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING FOR ESL READING

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group that received training in semantic mapping was not trained with cloze semantic maps, they would not be expected to show significant gain scores on these items. We cannot, however, readily explain why the ETR group (which received no training whatever in semantic maps) did gain significantly on these items. Finally, Table 1 shows that, as one would expect, the only group to gain significantly on the open-ended semantic maps was the group receiving training in semantic mapping. To summarize, the semantic mapping and ETR groups both showed similar significant gain scores on one of the dependent measures (open-ended questions), yet each group showed differences in gain scores on other dependent measures (cloze semantic maps, and open-ended semantic maps). Thus, in answer to our second research question—Does one type of strategy training facilitate L2 reading better than another?—it appears that there are both some similarities and some differences in the effectiveness of the two: Both appear to facilitate reading, but it depends upon how one measures that reading. Table 2 shows that when subjects’ learning styles are taken into account along with the differences in strategy training, there is a significant aptitude-by-treatment interaction, namely an interaction between learner characteristics (aptitude) and instructional methods (treatment) (Cronbach & Snow, 1977). Two sets of eight analyses were performed with the learning styles data. One set of analyses included all three groups; the second set of analyses included only the two training groups, since we were interested in the effects of training and possible interactions between training and learning styles. Each set of analyses focused separately on the two ILP subscales of interest (deep-shallow and elaborative processing) and each set investigated separately each of the four dependent measures of reading comprehension. Looking at all three groups (SM, ETR, and control), there is a statistically significant interaction between the deep-shallow scale of the ILP and strategy training treatment on the open-ended semantic map scores of the posttest. In both the semantic map and ETR training groups, both deep and shallow processors performed well on the open-ended posttest map; however, in the control group, only deep processors performed well on this posttest task. In addition to this significant aptitude-by-treatment interaction, we also see a significant main effect for training, in other words, a statistically significant difference among the three treatment groups. The semantic mapping group outperformed both the ETR group and the control group on the open-ended map task on the posttest. There were no other significant aptitude-by-treatment 666

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TABLE 2 Significance of Main Effects and Interactions Between Learning Style and Training

interactions between any of the subscales of the ILP and training when all three groups were taken into consideration. When just the two training groups are taken into consideration, Table 2 shows that there is a significant aptitude-by-treatment interaction between the elaborative scale of the ILP and strategy training on the open-ended question scores of the posttest. In the group that received training in semantic mapping, those high on the elaborative scale of the ILP outperformed those lower on the elaborative scale, whereas in the group that received training in ETR, those low on the elaborative scale of the ILP outperformed those higher on the elaborative scale. There were no other significant aptitude-by-treatment interactions between any of the subscales of the ILP and training when just the two training groups were considered. Thus, in answer to our third research question—How is the effectiveness of metacognitive strategy training related to the learning styles of the students ?—the effectiveness of our two metacognitive strategy training methods does seem to be related to differences in the learning styles of students. DISCUSSION Our results show that metacognitive strategy training in semantic mapping and in the experience-text-relationship method are effective in enhancing second language reading. Our results also show that while there are similarities between the two methods in their enhancement of second language reading on some measures, on other measures there are differences between them. Finally, our results show that there are significant interactions between students’ learning styles and the effectiveness of training in the two different strategies. These results should, of course, be interpreted cautiously. The Nsize of each group was rather small. Also, since in many ways this research is a first of its kind, additional studies are needed to replicate and stabilize the effects measured.5 5 This

experiment has already been replicated in a slightly altered form with subjects of somewhat lower proficiency levels (Level 3 at CESL, TOEFL scores 420-480). In the replication experiment, training in semantic mapping and in the experience-textrelationship method were combined into one experimental class which met over an eightweek period. Everything else in the experiment was the same as in the basic experiment described in the body of the paper. Results yielded significant gain scores on the part of the experimental group (N = 13) on two dependent measures—open-ended questions (t = 3.87, p = .0022) and open-ended map construction (t= 5.29, p = .0011). This was in contrast to a control group (N = 11), which showed no significant gain scores on any of the

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Nonetheless, the results of this study suggest that second language reading pedagogy, especially for adult students in academic ESL programs, should benefit from the inclusion of explicit, comprehension-fostering metacognitive strategy training. Furthermore, our results suggest that the types of such training should be varied to accommodate individual students’ differing learning styles.

■

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 23rd Annual TESOL Convention in San Antonio, TX, March 1989. The authors wish to thank research assistants Maria Linz, Donna Kiehnhoff, and Anne Calek, and Fulbright scholars Veronica Diptoadi and Manuela Julien. Without their help we could not have conducted the research reported in this paper. We also wish to acknowledge the cooperation of the CESL administration and staff at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, as well as the cooperation of the students who participated in the study.

THE AUTHORS Patricia L. Carrell is Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of English at the University of Akron in Ohio. Her research on schema theory and second language reading has been widely published in refereed journals and in two recently coedited books, Research in Reading in English as a Second Language (TESOL, 1987), and Interactive Approaches in Second Language Reading (Cambridge, 1989). She has recently become interested in metacognition and readers’ strategies. Becky G. Pharis is a member of the Linguistics Department/Center for English as a Second Language at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. She is currently with the SIU-C project in Niigata, Japan. Her research interests include classroomcentered research, and learning strategies and styles. Joseph C. Liberto teaches ESL at the Center for English as a Second Language at Southern Illinois University. He has taught ESL in adult education programs and for the Illinois Adult Indochinese Refugee Program. Currently, he is working on a cross-cultural study in reflective judgment. four dependent measures. Furthermore, there was a significant aptitude-by-training interaction between the training groups and the deep-shallow scale of the ILP on the gain scores of the open-ended semantic map task (F = 9.26, p = .0188). The shallow processors in the experimental group gained more from the training than did the deep processors, but the deep processors in the control group (without any specific SM or ETR training) gained more than did the shallow processors. This suggests that, at this proficiency level, both explicit comprehension-fostering strategy training methods (SM and ETR) are particularly beneficial for shallow processors, whereas deep processors may gain significantly on their own, without the advantages of specialized training. METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING FOR ESL READING

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REFERENCES Armbruster, B. B., Anderson, T. H., & Ostertag, J. (1986). Does text structure/summarization instruction facilitate learning from expository text? (Tech. Rep. No. 394). Champaign, IL: Center for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois. Au, K. H-P. (1979). Using the experience-text-relationship method with minority children. The Reading Teacher, 32, 677-679. Barnett, M. A. (1988). Reading through context: How real and perceived strategy use affects L2 comprehension. Modern Language Journal, 72, 150-162. Barnitz, J. G. (1985). Reading development of nonnative speakers of English. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Bartlett, B. J. (1978). Top-level structure as an organizational strategy for recall of classroom text. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University. Baudoin, E. M., Bober, E. S., Clarke, M. A., Dobson, B. K., & Silberstein, S. (1988). Culture shock and the problem of adjustment in new cultural environments. In Reader’s choice (2nd ed., pp. 31-33). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Biological Stresses. (1982, December). Bostonia, pp. 20-21. Block, E. (1986). The comprehension strategies of second language readers. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 463-494. Brown, A. L. (1981). Metacognition: The development of selective attention strategies for learning from texts. In M. L. Kamil (Ed.), Directions in reading: Research and instruction (pp. 21-43). (Thirtieth Yearbook of the National Reading Conference). Washington, DC: National Reading Conference. Brown, A. L., Armbruster, B. B., & Baker, L. (1986). The role of metacognition in reading and studying. In J. Orasanu (Ed.), Reading comprehension: From research to practice (pp. 49-75). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Brown, A. L., Campione, J. C., & Day, J. D. (1981). Learning to learn: On training students to learn from texts. Educational Researcher, 10, 14-21. Brown, A. L., & Palincsar, A. S. (1982). Inducing strategic learning from texts by means of informed, self-control training. Topics in Learning and Learning Disabilities, 2, 1-17. Brown, A. L., Palincsar, A. S., & Armbruster, B. B. (1984). Instructing comprehension-fostering activities in interactive learning situations. In H. Mandl, N. L. Stein, & T. Trabasso (Eds.), Learning and comprehension of text (pp. 255-286). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Carrell, P. L. (1984a). Evidence of a formal schema in second language comprehension. Language Learning, 34, 87-112. Carrell, P. L. (1984b). The effects of rhetorical organization on ESL readers. TESOL Quarterly, 18, 441-469. Carrell, P. L. (1985). Facilitating ESL reading by teaching text structure. TESOL Quarterly, 19, 727-752. 670

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Carrell, P. L. (1989a). Metacognitive awareness and second language reading. Modern Language Journal, 73, 121-134. Carrell, P. L. (1989b). Scoring system for open-ended questions and openended semantic map. Unpublished manuscript, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Cholesterol control. (Pamphlet in The Wellness Way series, available from Krames Communications, 312 90th Street, Daly City, CA 94015-1898) Chulalongkorn University Language Institute. Foundation Reading II (Vol. 3). Bangkok, Thailand. [No date available] Cook, L. K., & Mayer, R. E. (1983). Reading strategies training for meaningful learning from prose. In M. Pressley & J. R. Levin (Eds.), Cognitive strategy research: Educational applications (pp. 87-131). New York: Springer-Verlag. Craik, F. I. M., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 671-684. Craik, F. I. M., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104, 268-294. Cronbach, L. J., & Snow, R. E. (1977). Aptitudes and instructional methods: A handbook for research on interactions. New York: Irvington. Devine, J. (1984). ESL readers’ internalized models of the reading process. In J. Handscombe, R. Orem, & B. P. Taylor (Eds.), On TESOL ’83 (pp. 95-108). Washington, DC: TESOL. Duffy, G. G., Roehler, L. R., & Herrmann, B. A. (1988). Modeling mental processes helps poor readers become strategic readers. The Reading Teacher, 41, 762-767. Faerch, C., & Kasper, G. (Eds.). (1983). Strategies in interlanguage communication. London: Longman. Geva, E. (1983). Facilitating reading through flowcharting. Reading Research Quarterly, 18, 384-405. Hauptman, P. C. (1979). A comparison of first and second language reading strategies among English-speaking university students. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin, 4, 173-201. Heimlich, J. E., & Pittelman, S. D. (1986). Semantic mapping: Classroom applications. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Hosenfeld, C. (1977). A preliminary investigation of the reading strategies of successful and nonsuccessful second language learners. System, 5, 110-123. Johnson, D. D., Pittelman, S. D., & Heimlich, J. E. (1986). Semantic mapping. The Reading Teacher, 39, 778-783. Knight, S. L., Padron, Y. N., & Waxman, H. C. (1985). The cognitive reading strategies of ESL students. TESOL Quarterly, 19, 789-792. Mandler, J. M. (1978). A code in the node: The use of story schemata in retrieval. Discourse Processes, 1, 14-35. METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING FOR ESL READING

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Meyer, B. J. F. (1975). The organization of prose and its effect on recall. New York: North Holland. Nuttall, C. (1982). Malnutrition. In Teaching reading skills in a foreign language (p. 199). London: Hienemann Educational Books. O’Berg, K. (1972). Culture shock and the problem of adjustment in new cultural environments. In D. S. Hoopes (Ed.), Readings in intercultural communication (Vol. 2, pp. 43-45). Washington, DC: Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research. O’Malley, J. M. (1987). The effects of training in the use of learning strategies on learning English as a second language. In A. Wenden & J. Rubin (Eds.), Learner strategies in language learning (pp. 133-144). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Padron, Y. N. (1985). Utilizing cognitive reading strategies to improve English reading comprehension of Spanish-speaking bilingual students. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Houston. Padron, Y. N., & Waxman, H. C. (1988). The effect of ESL students’ perceptions of their cognitive strategies on reading achievement. TESOL Quarterly, 22, 146-150. Resnick, L. B. (1979). Theories and prescriptions for early reading instruction. In L. B. Resnick & P. A. Weaver (Eds. ), Theory and practice of early reading (Vol. 2, pp. 321-338). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Reutzel, D. R. (1985). Story maps improve comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 38, 400-404. Saitz, R. L., Dezell, M., & Stieglitz, F. B. (1984). Sources of Stress. In Contemporary perspectives: An advanced reader/rhetoric in English (pp. 86-89). Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Sarig, G. (1987). High-level reading in the first and in the foreign language: Some comparative process data. In J. Devine, P. L. Carrell, & D. E. Eskey (Eds.), Research in reading in English as a second language (pp. 105-120). Washington, DC: TESOL. Sarig, G., & Folman, S. (1987). Metacognitive awareness and theoretical knowledge in coherence production. Paper presented at the XXth Anniversary Communication and Cognition International Congress, Ghent, Belgium. (Forthcoming in M. Spoelders [Ed.], Communication and Cognition, special issue) Schmeck, R. R. (1980). Relationships between measures of learning style and reading comprehension. Perceptual Motor Skills, 50, 461-462. Schmeck, R. R. (1983). Learning styles of college students. In R. Dillon & R. R. Schmeck (Eds.), Individual differences in cognition (pp. 233-279). New York: Academic Press. Schmeck, R. R. (1988). Individual differences and learning strategies. In C. Weinstein, E. Goetz, & P. A. Alexander (Eds.), Learning and study strategies: Issues in assessment, instruction, and evaluation (pp. 171-192). New York: Academic Press. Schmeck, R. R., & Grove, E. (1979). Academic achievement and individual differences in learning processes. Applied Psychological Measurement, 3, 43-49. 672

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Schmeck, R. R., & Meier, S. (1984). Self-reference as a learning strategy and a learning style. Human Learning, 3, 9-17. Schmeck, R. R., & Phillips, J. (1982). Levels of processing as a dimension of difference between individuals. Human Learning, 1, 95-103. Schmeck, R. R., Ribich, F. D., & Ramanaiah, N. (1977). Development of a self-report inventory for assessing individual differences in learning processes. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 413-431. Sinatra, R. C., Berg, D., & Dunn, R. (1985). Semantic mapping improves reading comprehension of learning disabled students. Teaching Exceptional Children, 17, 310-314. Sinatra, R. C., Stahl-Gemake, J., & Berg, D. N. (1984). Improving reading comprehension of disabled readers through semantic mapping. The Reading Teacher, 38, 22-29. Sinatra, R. C., Stahl-Gemake, J., & Morgan, N. W. (1986). Using semantic mapping after reading to organize and write original discourse. Journal of Reading, 30, 4-13. Situational Stresses. (1982, December). Bostonia, pp. 17-19. Sonka, A. L. (1981). The nutrients in food. In Skillful reading: A text and workbook for students of English as a second language (pp. 91-93). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Stahl, S. A., & Vancil, S. J. (1986). Discussion is what makes semantic maps work in vocabulary instruction. The Reading Teacher, 40, 62-67. Waxman, H. C., & Padron, Y. N. (1987). The effect of students’ perceptions of cognitive strategies on reading achievement. P a p e r presented at the annual meeting of the Southwest Educational Research Association, Dallas, TX. Wenden, A., & Rubin, J. (1987). Learner strategies in language learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Winograd, P., & Hare, V. C. (1988). Direct instruction of reading comprehension strategies: The nature of teacher explanation. In C. E. Weinstein, E. T. Goetz, & P. A. Alexander (Eds.), Learning and study strategies: Issues in assessment, instruction, and evaluation (pp. 121-139). San Diego: Academic Press. Yorkey, R. C. (1970). What foreign visitors think of America. In Study skills for students of English as a second language (pp. 178-179). New York: McGraw-Hill.

APPENDIX Form A of Pre- and Posttest Instructions Read each of the following passages and answer the questions following each passage, Work on one passage at a time, and when you have finished with that passage, go on to the next. Work as quickly as you can, and try to do as much as you can as well as you can. However, you may not be able to complete everything. If you change your mind about an answer, completely erase your original response and clearly indicate your new response. METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING FOR ESL READING

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Most of the questions are of the multiple-choice or open-ended forms with which you are already familiar. However, some questions ask you to complete a diagram with information from the passage. The following is an example to show you how to answer these questions. Passage: “Although there are more than 3,000 varieties of tea, there are only three major types: black, green, and oolong. They all come from the same kind of bush; differences in the curing process determine the type.” Complete the diagram.

Major Types a. b. c. Answer: You should write the words “black,” “green” and “oolong” in the blank spaces by the letters a., b., and c. The order is not important.

AMERICA Last year more than a million and a half foreign tourists visited the United States. In order to understand intercultural problems better, and perhaps to find ways to improve America’s image abroad, a reporter recently interviewed some of these visitors as they were leaving to return home. He especially wanted to find out their first impressions of the United States, what places they most enjoyed visiting, and some of their likes and dislikes. As far as first impressions are concerned, almost all of the foreigners were impressed by the tremendous size of the country. The United States, of course, is a large country. The distance between San Francisco and New York is about the same as that between Gibraltar and Baghdad. Indeed, the entire Mediterranean Sea could easily fit within the country’s borders. Even expecting this, foreigners who visit the United States for the first time are overwhelmed by the vast distances. Apparently to be believed, such distances have to be traveled. The foreign visitors were also impressed by the range of climate and the variety of scenery in the country. Many were amazed to discover that, in the same day, they could travel from the snowy cold of New England winter to the sunny warmth of Florida sunshine. Even in the single state of California, they could find sandy beaches, rocky shores, tropical vegetation, hot dry deserts, redwood forests, and towering snow-capped mountains. They were also impressed by the informal friendliness of Americans. Whether on buses, trains, planes, or at vacation or scenic resorts, these visitors generally agreed that they had been greeted warmly. On the other hand, some reported that hotel clerks, waiters, and taxi drivers were often unsympathetic, impatient, and rude. The most common complaint of all was that so few Americans can speak any language but English, and some foreign visitors claimed that they had difficulty understanding the American accent. Based on the preceding passage, please circle the letter of the best answer to each of the following questions: 1. What does “this” in “Even expecting this. . .” (paragraph 2, line 5) refer to? a. The distance between San Francisco and New York b. The vastness of the country. c. The size of the Mediterranean Sea. d. The country’s borders. 674

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2. What made the most negative impression on foreign visitors? a. The country’s vastness. b. The informal friendliness of Americans. c. The fact that the American accent is hard to understand. d. The fact that not many Americans can speak a foreign language. 3. Which statement is not true according to the passage? a. The distance between San Francisco and New York is much less than that between Gibraltar and Baghdad. b. New England winters are cold. c. Some taxi drivers are impatient. d. The U.S.A. is a popular place for tourists. Based on the passage, but in your own words, please answer the following 4. The main idea of this passage is:

5. What is it about the climate and scenery that impresses foreign visitors?

Complete the Diagram 5. Fill in the following blanks with information from the preceding passage.

TOURISTS’ IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA

Good

.

. .

c. I


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CHOLESTEROL All around this country, breakfast tables are taking on a new look. Gone are the eggs, bacon, sausage, cream, and buttered toast Americans have been accustomed to. Here to stay are fresh fruit, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products. Why? Because more and more people are becoming concerned about cholesterol. Research shows that a high level of cholesterol in the blood is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease. Fortunately, you can control cholesterol by making simple changes in your diet and exercise habits. Along with smoking and high blood pressure, cholesterol is one of the major risk factors for coronary heart disease. But, it’s also one of the easiest to control. All other risk factors aside, a 25% reduction in serum (blood) cholesterol can reduce your risk of heart disease by 50%. Cholesterol is a vital part of every body cell. In the blood, it travels in a “package” coated with protein. “Bad” cholesterol (LDL) has a thinner protein coating than “good” cholesterol (HDL). LDL deposits itself on the walls of your arteries causing a waxy build-up called plaque, while HDL carries cholesterol out of the bloodstream. Plaque narrows or blocks the openings of your arteries, which impairs blood flow and can lead to heart attack, stroke, and death. Saturated fat is a dietary fat that raises the level of cholesterol in the blood. Saturated fat can also cause arterial plaque. When trying to reduce your cholesterol levels, it is important to reduce your intake of saturated fats as well. You can reduce your cholesterol and fat levels by making some simple low-cholesterol, low-fat choices in the foods that you eat. You can also maintain your ideal weight and get regular exercise which can lower total cholesterol and increase levels of the “good” cholesterol, HDL. Based on the preceding passage, please circle the letter of the best answer to each of the following questions: 1. People can have a heart attack and even die if a. their HDL level is low. b. they have LDL in their blood. c. the walls of their arteries are wide. d. the arteries are blocked with plaque. 2. We can infer from the passage that people who do the following are at greatest risk of having a heart attack: a. Eat whole grains, fruits, and vegetables everyday, b. Eat eggs, bacon, sausage, and lots of butter everyday. c. Drink milk and exercise regularly. d. Eat a piece of candy and walk for 20 minutes everyday. 3. To reduce their risk of heart disease by half, people should a. eat only fruits and vegetables. b. reduce their blood cholesterol by 50%. c. reduce their blood cholesterol by 25%. d. eliminate all cholesterol from their diet and blood Based on the passage, but in your own words, please answer the following: 4. What is the author's purpose in writing about cholesterol?

5. In what ways does fat contribute to the problems with cholesterol?

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Complete the Diagram 5. Fill in the following blanks with information from the preceding passage.

Risk Factors for Heart Disease a. cholesterol b. c.

MALNUTRITION The struggle against malnutrition and hunger is as old as man himself, and never across the face of our planet has the outcome been more in doubt. Malnourishment afflicts an estimated 400 million to 1.5 billion of the world's poor. Even in the affluent U. S. A., poverty means undernourishment for an estimated ten to twenty million. Hardest hit are children, whose growing bodies demand two and a half times more protein, pound for pound, than those of adults. Nutrition experts estimate that 70 percent of the children in low-income countries are affected. Misshapen bodies tell the tragic story of malnutrition. Medical science identifies two major types of malnutrition which usually occur in combination. The first, kwashiorkor, is typified by the bloated look, the opposite of what we associate with starvation. Accumulated fluids pushing against wasted muscles account for the plumpness of hands, feet, belly, and face. Emaciated shoulders reveal striking thinness. Caused by an acute lack of protein, kwashiorkor (a West African word) can bring brain damage, anemia, diarrhea, irritability, apathy, and loss of appetite. On the other hand, stick limbs, a bloated belly, wide eyes, and the stretched-skin face of an old person mark victims of marasmus, a word taken from the Greek “to waste away. ” Lacking calories as well as protein, sufferers may weigh only half as much as normal. With fat gone, the skin hangs in wrinkles or draws tight over bones. With marasmus comes anemia, diarrhea, dehydration, and an enormous appetite. Children, whose growing bodies require large amounts of protein, are afflicted in greater numbers, but perhaps only three percent of all child victims suffer the extreme stages described. Scientists are working feverishly to develop new weapons against malnutrition and starvation. But two-thirds of the human population of 3.9 billion live in the poorest countries which also have the highest birth rates. Four out of five people born each year are born in a have-not country—a country unable to supply its people’s nutritional needs. METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING FOR ESL READING

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Based on the preceding passage, please circle the letter of the best answer to each of the following questions: 1. Who are the most likely victims of malnutrition? a. Old people. b. West Africans. c. Children of the poor. d. Homeless people. 2. The bloated look associated with kwashiorkor is caused by: a. The absence of protein. b. Loss of appetite. c. Diarrhea and anemia. d. Fluids pushing against wasted muscles. 3. According to the passage, how many people in the world suffer malnourishment? a. 400 million to 1.5 billion people. b. 3.9 billion people. c. Ten to twenty million people. d. Four out of five people born each year. Based on the passage, but in your own words, please answer the following: 4. In general, what is the author’s purpose in this passage about malnourishment?

5. Compare what happens to appetite in kwashiorkor and marasmus.

Based on the preceding passage, and using the diagrams from the previous two passages as samples, please construct a complete diagram for the preceding passage.

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REVIEWS The TESOL Quarterly welcomes evaluative reviews of publications relevant to TESOL professionals. In addition to textbooks and reference materials, these include computer and video software, testing instruments, and other forms of nonprint materials.

Broken Promises: Reading Instruction in Twentieth-Century America Patrick Shannon. Granby, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1989. Pp. xxi + 186. One of the most important developments in the social sciences in recent years has been the growing awareness that prevailing theories may reflect the legitimizing philosophies of dominant groups. The critical approach to social science theory seeks to discover the ways in which theory and practice serve the interests of groups that dominate the state apparatus, including education. This is nowhere more evident than in language studies, where the interests of the state and those of minority language groups are often directly contradictory. What is disturbing is that the field of ESL has been remarkably free from such critical analysis. For instance, most ESL practitioners accept the view that learning English is a path to economic and social advancement, rather than a barrier to groups who often have no realistic opportunity to become fluent in English. Thus most second language acquisition (SLA) theories emphasize psychological and social-psychological factors such as motivation, while ignoring the links between language learning and power and dominance. With few exceptions (such as Fairclough, in press), work in ESL/SLA ignores questions such as: Who benefits when minority language groups are required to learn English for employment? What are the consequences of the belief that a single language is more effective than several languages for national communication? How does ESL serve to block the access of large numbers of people to economic resources and political power? Given the failure of ESL/SLA to confront such questions, it is not surprising that ESL is often seen by members of minority language groups as an agent of sociopolitical domination. Although no ESL book deals with these questions, a new book in a closely related field—reading instruction—offers ESL specialists a valuable window into critical analysis. Patrick Shannon’s Broken Promises: Reading Instruction in Twentieth-Century America 679

begins with a deceptively simple question: What are the causes and consequences of the use of commercial reading materials in most literacy/reading programs? This question leads Shannon to a farranging, profoundly disturbing analysis of the “de-skilling” and “disempowering” of teachers; the influence of “experts” (mainly university professors), publishers, administrators, and others who do not actually teach reading, over the classroom practices of those who do; the rise of standardized tests unrelated to the critical skills necessary in modern society; and the precipitous decline in reading and literacy among many Americans. The book is organized into three sections. Part I, on the historical role of commercially prepared materials, includes an analysis of reading instruction before 1900, early attempts to reform reading instruction, and the rise of reading experts and commercial publishers. Shannon argues that the current movement toward “entrepreneurship” and parental “choice” in education repeats a popular theme from the first half of the century when private enterprise first began its effort to determine the content and methods of reading instruction. He concludes that the triumph of standardized materials by 1960 rendered school personnel dependent on individuals who may never have set foot in a reading classroom since their own childhoods. Part II of Broken Promises examines the role of the teacher in classes using commercial reading materials. Shannon summarizes the conclusions from four studies which he conducted in public schools during the 1980s. (Full reports of the data can be located through journal references cited in the book. ) Major conclusions include the following: 1. The goal of reading instruction has been reduced from developing students who love reading and can use literacy in their daily lives to a standardized reading “competence” measured by commercial tests. 2. Segmentation of reading into discrete skills that can be incrementally taught forces individuals to conform to a single pattern of learning. 3. Objective tests that substitute for teachers’ professional judgments dehumanize the social act of reading. 4. Standardization of education means that teaching methods and materials become more important than teachers. Shannon argues that these developments alienate teachers, exclude parents, and bore students. Moreover, they deny teachers the power to exercise their professional responsibility. Shannon connects teachers’ loss of professional authority to a wide range of ..

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educational issues, including mastery learning, merit pay, demands for accountability, and standardized teacher training. Part III of Broken Promises, on resistance to contemporary reading instruction, explores the possibility for constructive change. The author surveys teachers’ groups that have sought to reemphasize the subjectivity of reading materials, to teach students to share the joys rather than merely the skills of reading, and to return to teachers the power to evaluate students’ reading competence. According to Shannon, these groups question two myths of contemporary education: that instruction will succeed if it is delivered to all students in the same way, and that people outside the classroom can make better decisions than the teachers who actually know the students. Shannon is explicit about the political implications of his position. Resistance to current practice increases students’ and teachers’ control over their lives, contributes to a more informed and critically aware citizenry, and requires teachers to reject the passive and alienated roles assigned to them. The key is that teachers must see that education need not be organized in its present form. Principals do not have to run schools; commercial publishers need not determine curricula; experts are not the most competent to establish teaching methods; and standardized commercial tests do not assess students’ progress in using their reading and literacy skills. Teachers can do all of these tasks, and students will be better educated as a result. There is a great deal in this book that will interest ESL instructors, those who educate teachers, and SLA researchers. Teachers will find provocative explanations for many of the problems that plague the profession, including inadequate program funding, low salaries and poor job security, insensitive bureaucracies, and student performance that falls far short of goals. Teacher trainers will find methods texts discussed as historical documents, experts depicted as impediments to education, and materials described as a burden rather than a relief. SLA researchers will find a strong advocate for critical research, and an implicit rejection of standard empirical research methods as well as symbolic methods such as ethnomethodology. Although Broken Promises is not about ESL, its relevance is apparent in every chapter. A similar critical analysis of ESL/SLA is long overdue. REFERENCE Fairclough, N. (in press). Language and power. New York: Longman.

JAMES W. TOLLEFSON University of Washington

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Contemporary World Issues: An Interactive Approach to Reading and Writing Richard L. Light and Fan Lan-Ying. New York: Collier Macmillan, 1989. Pp. xvii + 247. The academic writing needs of limited English proficiency (LEP) students have been difficult to define and problematic to address (Spack, 1988). Instructive practices borrowed from nativespeaker classrooms do not automatically solve the problems of the ESL student. In most writing classes, earlier pattern-centered approaches, such as controlled composition or the teaching of rhetorical patterns, have given way to process-centered approaches that focus on the writer’s cognitive processes and often emphasize self-generated topics. But is this enough? Students in academic settings need to go beyond their personal knowledge base. Finding the link between a learner’s background knowledge and experience and the academic requirements of different disciplines has been a demanding challenge, especially for teachers of ESL. Choosing topics that are culturally accessible and sufficiently weighty for use with university students is likewise a daunting task, given that many LEP students specialize in subject areas (such as engineering or physics) containing arcane or specialized vocabularies. Fortunately, a new text, Contemporary World Issues, provides ESL teachers with a variety of readings and exercises that successfully address these areas of pedagogical difficulty. Contemporary World Issues is a reading-based, integrated skills textbook for upper intermediate or advanced students of ESL who will be doing academic work in English. The 12 units, each of which can generate up to eight hours of class time, are organized in a fixed format based on a reading passage. The units are not graded, and can be completed in any order. Each thematic unit is based on authentic materials intended to appeal to language learners of many different backgrounds. Topics include the following: About the Computer, Hugs are Better than Drugs, Money for Guns and Money for Butter, and Refugees: A Fact of Life? Each unit begins with a Background section that incorporates a variety of imaginative and interactive activities designed to induce content schemata and to preview key concepts and vocabulary. This is followed by a Pre-Reading section: More traditional in its approach, it leads the student to focus on skimming, scanning, and predicting before encountering the text as a whole. The Reading section is subdivided so that the student reads for a purpose, later discussing or using information to complete a task, such as filling in a graph. A Vocabulary Study exercise is also included in the 682

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Reading section. Several units contain innovative activities in the Background and Reading sections, such as rank-ordering personal information and comparing it to a standard, or comparing two sources of data presentation (text vs. graph), noting discrepancies which must then be accommodated. A Writing section conceptually related to the text is subdivided into Pre-Writing and Writing, and again provides a variety of activities, often with checklists for self-editing or with instructions for obtaining peer review. Finally, a Summary section provides additional thematically related work which may involve reading, discussion, writing, or all three. A Supplementary (optional) Reading continues the theme and provides an opportunity for students to time their reading (instructions provided). Suggestions for Further Reading concludes each unit. The strength of this book is clearly found in its range of imaginative and thought-provoking activities, which continually challenge the learner to approach each topic in yet another way. The student is thereby constantly reviewing and revising while building both confidence and a repertory of useful academic skills. The authors have provided a wide variety of authentic visuals including maps, charts, graphs (line, bar, and pie) and flow charts. Line drawings, cartoons, and well-chosen photographs contribute to an attractive appearance. Students are asked to use these data as a starting point for written work, an idea which has worked well with native speakers (Hillocks, 1984). The topics themselves are somewhat controversial, motivating, and current: A multiplicity of viewpoints is encouraged, and students are often asked to justify or explain a certain point of view, and learn to listen to the opinions of others. A minor weakness in an otherwise stimulating text is the relative sterility of the prereading vocabulary exercises (“Essential Language”), which seem isolated at the sentence level and therefore serve more as a pretest than as a teaching device. Although preteaching vocabulary has proved to be an effective means of improving reading comprehension (Hudson, 1982; Taglieber, Johnson, & Yarbrough, 1988), these exercises sometimes lack face validity (Are we checking vocabulary knowledge, cultural familiarity, or both?) for both teacher and learner. Prereading vocabulary activities that are more integrated would be preferable. An additional minor weakness is the occurrence of several errors missed by the publisher (e.g., De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is cited twice, both times with a publication date of 1935, rather than 1835). The overall impression, however, is very positive: The text is suitable for learners from varied backgrounds and usable REVIEWS

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by teachers with different teaching styles. Both learner autonomy and sensitivity to cross-cultural differences are highlighted throughout. Links between learning and thinking are evident in the choice of activities where language learners predict, classify, prioritize, or summarize while they are reading and discussing, rather than just mechanically working through the text. Contemporary World Issues is a welcome addition to the ESL teacher’s bookshelf. REFERENCES Hillocks, G., Jr. (1984). What works in teaching composition: A metaanalysis of experimental treatment studies. American Journal of Education, 93, 133-170. Hudson, T. (1982). The effects of induced schemata on the “short circuit” in L2 reading: Non-decoding factors in L2 reading performance. Language Learning, 32, 1-31. Spack, R. (1988). Initiating ESL students into the academic discourse community: How far should we go? TESOL Quarterly, 22 (l), 29-51. Taglieber, L. K., Johnson, L. L., & Yarbrough, D. B. (1988). Effects of prereading activities on EFL reading by Brazilian college students. TESOL Quarterly, 22 (3), 455-472.

NANCY RENNAU TUMPOSKY Montclair State College, Upper Montclair, N]

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BOOK NOTICES The TESOL Quarterly welcomes short evaluative reviews of print and nonprint publications relevant to TESOL professionals. Book notices may not exceed 500 words and must contain some discussion of the significance of the work in the context of current theory and practice in TESOL.

Language Diversity: Problem or Resource? Sandra Lee McKay and Sau-ling Cynthia Wong (Eds.). New York: Newbury House, 1988. Pp. xiii+ 386. From the opening chapter, this book answers the question in its title with a strong assertion that linguistic diversity should be considered a national resource to be maximized, rather than a problem to be fixed. An edited collection of papers by specialists in language education and linguistics, Language Diversity provides a convincing argument that language difference should not be treated as a cause for school failure or discrimination for minority groups in the United States. The opening chapter by Richard Ruiz provides the theoretical premise on which the book is based. Discussing different attitudes toward language and their impact on language policy, Ruiz points out potentially negative effects from both the problem-oriented approach, with its emphasis on either eradication or remediation, and the rights-oriented approach, which has met with resistance and confrontation. In their place he proposes a resource-orientation and cites several potential benefits of linguistic pluralism. Ruiz’ argument is consistent with that of cultural anthropologists who maintain that multiculturalism is the normal human experience and that educators must develop learning environments that promote multicultural competence. The second section of the book provides a historical perspective on linguistic diversity in the United States, with numerous graphs and tables showing demographic data and factors leading to language retention or loss. The third section focuses on seven Spanish-speaking and Asianlanguage groups who have most recently had an impact on U.S. schools— Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, and Vietnamese. Emphasis is both on shared factors, such as schooling and economic incentives, and on distinctive patterns in language, culture, and education that affect language use within the community. Educational implications are discussed in the final section of the book. Summaries of the language acquisition theories of Cummins, Krashen, and Schumann provide insight into other variables affecting the language experience of minority language students, besides the social context emphasized in the previous section. McKay’s chapter compares educational alternatives (submersion, pull-out ESL, bilingual education, 685

immersion, and two-way bilingual programs) in terms of Ruiz’ concepts of language-as-problem, language-as-right, or language-as-resource. Her conclusion that two-way bilingual programs and immersion programs are beneficial for both dominant and minority groups seems to mirror the conclusion of anthropologists that multicultural education should be seen as a way of promoting awareness of and competence in multiple cultures. In the concluding chapter, Wong discusses major legal issues regarding the rights of language minorities. This serves as a reminder that the English-only movement continues to threaten the rights of students with whom we in ESL work. In view of the fact that TESOL, NCTE, and several other professional organizations are on record as opposing the English-only movement, ESL educators need to be prepared to defend our position. This book can give us the information to understand and explain why multilingualism is as valuable a resource as is multiculturalism. MARJORIE TERDAL Portland State University

Reading Skills for the Social Sciences. Louann Haarman, Patrick Leech, and Janey Murray. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp. x + 132. Designed for intermediate students of English who specialize in the social sciences, this text states two principal objectives: “to develop those reading skills and strategies fundamental to efficient reading in a second language, with particular reference to academic prose; and to develop techniques for dealing with extended texts in the social sciences” (p. vi). Each chapter of Reading Skills for the Social Sciences centers on either a set of short readings or, in later chapters, one longer text. Readings are representative of what students of the social sciences would encounter: academic book advertisements, brief research reports, extracts from textbooks, book reviews, and extended reports. The exercises for each chapter are divided into the following segments: (a) “Approaching the Text,” which typically includes prereading questions, skimming, scanning, and identifying main ideas; (b) “Intensive Reading,” which is designed to help students examine the structure and content of the text; (c) “Language Work,” which includes work on modal verbs and “linkers,” i.e., transitions and conjunctions; (d) “Vocabulary and Word Building,” which requires students to note the class of given vocabulary words and to provide a translation and alternative word forms for each; and (e) “Observations on Text Type,” which briefly describes the function and typical structure of the type of text being studied. This last section also serves as a summary of content introduced throughout the chapter. This book is valuable to its intended audience on many counts. First, the texts chosen for each chapter are engaging and well-written. Examples include a passage on the shadow economy and a series of entertaining brief reports from a research digest, one drolly titled, “Eating People is Wrong.” Second, the book uses extensive, methodical vocabulary work that 686

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concentrates on what readers in the social sciences are likely to encounter. Third, the Language Work—a wide array including activities on modal verbs and linking words—addresses a key ingredient of what second language students need in order to competently interpret and evaluate readings: Understanding these grammatical features leads one beyond the basic information of the text to the author’s point of view. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the book is that, from the earliest chapters, the exercises invite students to apply their background knowledge to the readings and to thoroughly analyze what they read. This is evident, for example, in exercises where students discover the similarities in structure across texts of the same type, or demonstrate their own understanding of the text by outlining not only the topics in the reading but also the author’s arguments for each topic. While reading a book advertisement, students learn to separate descriptive from evaluative adjectives, and later, while working on a book review, learn to separate the reviewer’s opinion from the author’s. Reading Skills for the Social Sciences combines engaging, authentic materials with exercises that encourage students to be active readers. It is a valuable new resource for ESL students in the social sciences. WENDY SCHOENER University of Massachusetts, Boston

The Process of Writing. Mary Stewart. Hong Kong: Macmillan, 1989. Pp. vi + 104. Mary Stewart has taught English to Chinese students in Hong Kong for nine years; The Process of Writing, which evolved from her own classroom practice, is designed for nonnative-speaking students in the intermediate level English composition class. Each of the book’s 10 units contain 10 or more classroom activities; these involve the student in the processes of generating, organizing, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading material. Each activity requires one class hour to complete. Units specify a particular kind of written product for a particular audience. Unit I invites the student to produce an informative passage about “language, writing, and being a writer” (p. 7). Exercises in Unit I include activities that involve students in brainstorming, fast-writing, and peer reading and review. Subsequent units in Stewart’s book include class activities involving students in all stages of composing, and require students to produce a variety of texts: a description of a person for a friend; an entertaining story in a letter to a pen friend; a dramatic script to be acted in class; a description of a scene for a tourist brochure; a report to the director of an imaginary company describing a newly invented product, along with a proposed advertising campaign for that product; a book review for fellow BOOK NOTICES

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students; a statistical report for the school; a discussion of an abstract concept for an educated adult audience; and a proficiency test in composition for an external assessor. The conceptual level of the tasks becomes more difficult as the book progresses, with each unit providing a sequence of exercises that moves from a “top-down” (knowledge-based) concern with content and organization to a “bottom-up” (text-based) concern with style and accuracy. Several limitations of the book should be noted. Many of the exercises are specifically related to life in Hong Kong and to Chinese students learning English. Another limitation may derive from its assumption that students will be able to proofread and edit their writing for grammatical correctness and rhetorical effectiveness without receiving overt instruction in these areas. The book does include one exercise on the use of prepositions to convey spatial relationships, and several exercises on the logical relationships signaled by various logical connectors. However, teachers who select this book as a course text will probably need to collect examples of writing problems from their students’ own work in order to provide instruction that will help students see the various ways these problems might be solved. These limitations, however, do not seriously detract from the book’s many virtues. Its particular strength lies in the practical base from which it evolved. The carefully structured class activities require students to use a recursive process for producing their written products. This attention to process, as well as the variety of task-related classroom activities provided, makes this text a resource that even a beginning teacher could use with confidence. SANDRA K. TAWAKE East Carolina University

Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical Guide for Teachers. Penny Ur. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp. vi + 288. This book belongs on the shelf and in the classrooms of every ESL/EFL teacher and teacher trainee who does any direct teaching or practicing of grammar. Grammar Practice Activities is filled with useful, often imaginative exercises and is well-organized in its approach. In Part I, the author offers justification for grammar practice activities, and outlines the general principles behind the design and selection of activities in this book. Her basic assumptions include the following: that attempting to learn grammar intuitively, exclusively from communicative activities, is inefficient; that grammar instruction needs to be included in ESL/EFL courses; and that direct practice of a point of grammar is the most sensible and efficient way for students to master and therefore acquire that point. Ur makes the traditional distinctions among manipulative, meaningful, 688

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and communicative grammar practice, conceding that all three do belong in the ESL/EFL curriculum. This book focuses primarily on communicative exercises, but on exercises nevertheless. These activities, which are intended as grammar practice and not merely as communicative exercises, are deliberately constructed so that students will make as few errors as possible. In Ur’s opinion, to be effective, grammar practice activities focusing on a specific grammatical feature must provide a high volume of interesting opportunities for students to repeat that feature correctly. While reminiscent of audiolingualism, Ur’s comments on error demonstrate that attitudes have indeed changed. Errors are to be avoided not because students are likely to learn incorrect forms, but because students need to experience success in language learning in order to remain receptive to target language input. Part II, a handbook of grammar activities, is organized by grammatical feature. Although no level or age group is excluded, most of the activities seem to be for young adults at intermediate levels. Some of the activities are familiar (Complete sentences beginning with “If I had a million dollars, I would. . .”), while some are more imaginative (Justify these hypothetical actions: If . . . , I might paint myself green/take off all my clothes in public/set fire to my house). Excellent contests, competitions, getting-toknow-you activities abound, all explained clearly and often accompanied by charts to fill in, pictures to duplicate, and cards to cut out. For some, one drawback of this excellent book might be its nonacademic orientation, for instance, the use of food items in exercises focusing on countable/uncountable nouns. A second drawback might be found in the principle that students must experience success in their grammar practice. As a result, few activities call for the most difficult kinds of distinctions, such as between present perfect and past or present tenses. Instead, each tense is essentially practiced separately; this results in the student’s concentrating on forms that are fairly easy to master, rather than on the meanings of these tenses, a much more complex distinction for students to grasp. These drawbacks notwithstanding, Grammar Practice Activities makes an outstanding contribution to the field, providing a great deal of imaginative, communicative practice of grammar in an exceptionally easyto-use format. ILONA LEKI University of Tennessee

Frontiers: An Active Introduction to English Grammar. John Schmidt and Terry Simon. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988. Pp. xi + 324. Teacher’s Guide, pp. 64. One cassette tape. An introductory grammar textbook for students at the secondary school/ precollege level, Frontiers offers an array of teacher- and student-centered BOOK NOTICES

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activities based on the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Approaching this material both inductively and deductively, each of the books 12 chapters presents a different concept (e.g., time, place, weather, numbers, historical events) and each follows the same format. In each chapter, the student is presented with a reading passage or conversation illustrating the grammatical feature being taught, followed by comprehension questions. Illustrative tasks and formulas provide visual aids to enhance comprehension and retention. A range of written exercises, from highly structured to those requiring a greater input of self-expression from the student, includes fill-in-the-blank exercises and cloze passages, as well as creative tasks such as composing short dialog or paragraphs. Oral exercises include interviews, pairwork, and mini conversations. Each chapter also contains a pronunciation section focusing on important phonemic distinctions or morphophonemics variations. An activities section near the end of each chapter provides games, puzzles, interviews, and exercises in sentence completion, capitalization, punctuation, and dictation. These are followed by the final, review section, comprising multiple-choice TOEFL-like exercises in sentence completion, listening comprehension, and structure error identification. Throughout the book, mature relevant contexts illustrate grammatical items, and the photographs and illustrations are designed to appeal to a wide range of ages. The cassette tape accompanying Frontiers includes introductory dialogs and reading passages, pairwork models, pronunciation exercises, and mini conversations. The Teacher’s Guide provides scripts to accompany the cassette as well as an answer key. Frontiers would serve well either as the main text in a beginning integrative course or as the textbook for a grammar class. Although the authors’ intent was to present “a communicative-based grammar text” (p. vii), the book provides structural practice and discrete-point review. However. of all the so-called “communicative” grammar texts I have used. Frontiers is the most successful in its presentation of “meaningful contexts” of universal appeal. This text presents a variety of approaches, offering the instructor greater flexibility. and choice. Teachers and students alike will appreciate its versatility, consistency, and clarity. ODILE ZARZOUR University of Houston, Downtown

Focus: An ESL Grammar. Barbara Robinson. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Pp. xviii + 324. In Focus, a grammar text for intermediate-level adults studying academic ESL, the author effectively uses what she calls an “eclectic approach” (p. vii), mixing traditional grammar drills with a functional outlook. 690

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The 16 chapters, each quite lengthy (three to eight classroom hours), include 5 to 10 grammatical points of “Focus,” along with related exercises and a review section. Each chapter begins with an “introductory context” (p. viii), which is a backdrop for the focuses and drills to follow. Focuses and drills alternate through most of the chapter, interrupted only twice: once for a “Wider Angle” section, examining a broad application of the grammatical feature under discussion; and once for a “Close-Up,” detailing that structure’s more specific uses. The chapters represent a genuinely integrated approach to grammar. About half use speech functions rather than grammatical forms as controlling themes, as evidenced by their titles: Chapter 14 is called “Identifying and Specifying,” in contrast to the more syntactic Chapter 12, “Gerunds and Infinitives.” Situations appropriate to international college students in North America are emphasized frequently. One of this text’s strengths is its excellent use of illustrations and examples. Most of the illustrations are stimulating as well as educational; photos appear frequently, along with computer-graphics. Some illustrations are unfortunately located on the page preceding or following their descriptions, causing the reader to have to search for certain figures and examples. Nevertheless, the illustrations and examples are worth the effort. The book’s drills were not designed without regard to other aspects of the chapter; they follow a theme presented in the introductory context, in another illustration, or sometimes in another drill. Through a great variety of communicative drills, learners are able to express personal views while practicing correct forms of speech. Along with four useful appendices (spelling aids, irregular verb forms, and separable and inseparable multiple-word verbs), Focus contains a complete, easy-to-use index. Other teaching aids include a teacher’s manual (containing the answers to text exercises), notes on each chapter, and 16 photocopiable chapter tests. The manual also suggests which chapters may be omitted or postponed without causing problems further on in the book. For home study, students can purchase a FOCUS workbook with supplementary drills corresponding to the principles taught in class. Focus is an effective book: Through the use of excellent illustrations and examples, it thoroughly covers the grammar appropriate to this level. Its varied approach and stimulating contexts allow for discussion of topics relevant to the adult international student in a North American academic ESL program. Students will likely find this text interesting and motivational. KAREN MARIE WILSON University of California, Riverside

English Structure in Focus, Book Two. (2nd ed.). Polly Davis. New York: Newbury House, 1989. Pp. xi + 523. English Structure in Focus, Book Two is a grammar textbook for ESL students at the advanced level. The second edition of English Structure in BOOK NOTICES

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Focus consists of two volumes: Book One for intermediate students and Book Two for high-intermediate to advanced learners. Book Two can be used either as a continuation of Book One or as an independent textbook for high-intermediate/advanced level students. This textbook is not a comprehensive grammar of English, as the title may imply, but rather concentrates on two important areas of English grammar: the verbal system and the formation of complex sentences. It does not deal with such topics as noun phrases and prepositions. The major emphasis of this textbook is on expanding the sentence through the use of verbal phrases and clauses. Thus it emphasizes the formal and semantic systems of tense, aspect, modality, and voice, as well as how simple sentences can be formed into complex sentences with adverb clauses, adjective clauses, verbal phrases, and coordination. Each lesson in the text consists of four major parts: the structural focus, transfer exercises, discussion topics, and composition topics. Each grammatical feature is presented in chart form with examples and a brief explanation. Students can learn the grammar through controlled practice in real situations related to a central theme. The prominent features of this book are the diagrams, grammar charts, photographs, and drawings that clarify the grammar and motivate student interest in the given topics. The materials for fill-in-the-blank exercises are selected from newspapers and magazines dealing with current issues and American life. In the Transfer Exercises, students can apply what they have learned to a new context or to their own experiences through practice in pairs, groups, or as a whole class. In the Discussion Topics, students can share their own ideas or discuss topics in pairs or small groups using the vocabulary and grammatical structures they have learned. Finally, the Composition Topics provide students the opportunity to express their own ideas in writing. Teachers do not need to rigidly follow the lesson format or grammatical sequence of the text, but they can rearrange these according to their teaching approach or to the needs and levels of the students. Overall, it seems that English Structure in Focus, Book Two meets its intended goals for advanced ESL students who need to acquire high-level grammatical knowledge and to express their ideas and experiences with increasingly complex sentences. This textbook is particularly successful in avoiding the threat of monotony by providing diverse reading topics along with many grammar exercises. Since this text is not a comprehensive English grammar book and the explanation of grammatical points is not very detailed, it may not be appropriate for those who would like more comprehensive explanations of English grammar. However, this textbook will be very helpful for those who are weak in the English verbal system and for those who want to develop their writing skills through the careful study of some of the major aspects of English grammar. HAEYEON KIM University of California, Los Angeles 692

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English Grammar: An Outline. Rodney Huddleston. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp. xii + 212. As the title suggests, English Grammar: An Outline provides a descriptive overview of the structure of English. It is important to note that this book is not intended for use in ESL instruction; it is designed primarily for an introductory English grammar course addressed to native speakers at the university level majoring in linguistics (p. ix). Nevertheless, English Grammar does in fact serve a wide audience (p. ix): The book’s description of grammatical categories across languages and their application within a particular language (English) make ESL teachers and advanced ESL students a plausible audience. Using a language typology framework, the book presents current theoretical advances in describing major grammatical constructions and categories. This should help advanced ESL students from various language backgrounds better understand the structure of English. Those readers more familiar with traditional grammar will benefit from footnotes commenting on concepts that differ from those found in more traditional approaches to grammar instruction. The book is systematically organized into 13 chapters. Chapter 1 begins with some basic terminology in language description; Chapter 2 provides a basic outline of the parts of speech; Chapters 3 through 13 define, first at a general level then at a language-particular level, grammatical categories introduced in the second chapter. At the end of each self-contained chapter are exercises focusing on the main points covered within that section. Moreover, any grammatical term can be easily located by using the index or the table of contents. English Grammar is distinguished by its clarity of presentation: The explanation of grammatical terminology is comprehensible and precise, with a sufficient number of examples and diagrams. The format of this text, however, does present one potential weakness: The type size is small and may bother some readers. The type size, however, may also be considered one of the book’s strengths, i.e., this relatively thin paperback is easy to carry around and thus becomes a handy reference. Notwithstanding notable exceptions such as The Grammar Book (CelceMurcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1983), efforts to incorporate current theoretical advances from modern linguistics into ESL grammar descriptions have unfortunately not been fully realized. ESL teachers can, however, benefit from linguistics texts such as Huddleston’s by applying his insights to ESL instruction. English Grammar is an excellent reference guide to English construction and categories, for students of both linguistics and ESL. REFERENCE Celce-Murcia, M., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1983). The grammar book: An ESL/ EFL teacher’s course. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. HYUN SOOK KIM University of California, Los Angeles

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BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIES The TESOL Quarterly invites readers to submit short reports and updates on their work. These summaries may address any areas of interest to Quarterly readers. Authors’ addresses are printed with these reports to enable interested readers to contact the authors for more details. Edited by GAIL WEINSTEIN-SHR Temple University

Rote Learning, Attitudes, and Abilities: A Comparison of Japanese and American Students THOMAS TINKHAM University of Guam, Mangilao

Rote learning is not a popular subject. The mere mention by this writer that he is interested in rote learning has produced visible shudders in educators around him. More formally, a search through the annual indexes of the 347,096 articles listed in the Current index to Journals in Education (CIJE), years 1970 through 1987, reveals only 35 items listed under Rote Learning (in contrast to over 4,800 articles listed under Second Language Instruction/Learning and 30 articles devoted to Roofing [materials and designs] ). Furthermore, only two articles in the past 18 years cross-index rote learning with second language learning, and both of these present criticisms (Engles, 1975; Koivutari, 1987). Of the more general articles, the earliest listed criticism is a republication (1982) of an essay written by William Hazlitt nearly 200 years ago. The only listed author to defend rote learning within the context of general learning is Jensen (1974). Nevertheless, despite its continuing unpopularity, rote learning remains a common activity in second language classrooms around the world. Without presenting a case for or against rote learning, the following study presents first, a comparison of the attitudes of Japanese and American students toward both rote learning and more “creative” learning, and second, a comparison of the same students’ performances, given similar rote learning tasks. THE STUDY Hypotheses

Hypotheses tested were the following: (a) Japanese students demonstrate greater acceptance of rote learning than do their American 695

counterparts, (b) American students demonstrate greater acceptance of creative learning than do their Japanese counterparts, (c) Japanese students demonstrate greater recall of new words in a new language than do their American counterparts, and (d) Japanese students demonstrate greater recognition of new words in a new language than do their American counterparts. Instrument Students completed a four-page test of their acceptance and performance of rote learning in a language learning situation. The first page of the test, which consisted of two semantic differentials similar to those proposed by Osgood (1953), was intended to discover student attitudes toward two tasks which would follow: (a) memorizing 10 new words in a new language and (b) writing a short description in a new language. The second page of the test presented each student with 12 small pictures, each matched with a corresponding “word,” which they were to learn. The pictures were clearly identifiable (eg., dog, man, house), while the words were unfamiliar both to Japanese and English speakers and were of differing lengths and sound patterns. The third page of the test was a test of recall. The 12 pictures were presented and students were directed to recall and write the corresponding new words. The fourth page was a test of recognition with the 12 pictures presented, but with all 12 new words listed at the top of the page. Two versions of the test were administered, one with directions in Japanese, the other in English. Sample The test was given to a total of 136 sophomore level high school students: 47 girls in Hamamatsu, Japan; 42 boys in Kyoto, Japan; and a combination of 47 boys and girls in Central Point, Oregon, U.S.A. The results of the students of the two high schools in Japan are combined in this report.

Study Results Mean scores (out of a possible 12) (a) Attitudes toward the rote learning of 10 new words Japanese students: mean positive score of 11.01 American students: mean positive score of 9.0 (b) Attitudes toward writing a short description Japanese students: mean positive score of 10.09 American students: mean positive score of 10.98 696

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(c) Performance on test of rote learning, recall Japanese students: mean score of 8.9 items correct American students: mean score of 7.72 items correct (d) Performance on test of rote learning, recognition Japanese students: mean score of 11.27 items correct American students: mean score of 10.34 items correct

Analysis Hypothesis (a). Japanese students scored significantly more positive (p = .01) in their attitude toward memorizing 10 new words in a new language than did their American counterparts. Hypothesis (b). Although American students appeared slightly more positive in their attitudes toward writing a short description, the difference in means between the American and the Japanese students was not significant (p < .05). Hypothesis (c). Japanese students scored significantly higher (p = .01) in their performance recalling 12 recently memorized words in a new language than did their American counterparts. Hypothesis (d). Japanese students scored significantly higher (p = .01) in their performance recognizing 12 recently memorized words in a new language than did their American counterparts.

DISCUSSION There appears to be a significant difference between Japanese and American high school students in their attitudes toward rote learning and in their performances in tasks requiring rote learning. Japanese students appear to view rote learning in a more positive light than do their American counterparts. Japanese students also perform significantly better both recalling and recognizing new words in a new language. The attitudes of Japanese students toward the free production of a short description in a new language, while averaging less positive than those of the Americans, were not significantly different. In light of the above, this writer believes that ESL/EFL teachers and curriculum developers should realize that many students are very good at rote learning and even appear to enjoy it. Consequently, instead of designing and teaching materials that reflect only their own culturally bound strengths and attitudes, educators should take into consideration the strengths and attitudes of their students and take advantage of what those students bring to the classroom. BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIES

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REFERENCES Engles, L. K. (1975). Rote learning and rule learning in foreign-language teaching. ITL Review of Applied Linguistics, 27, 9-18. Hazlitt, W. (1982). On the ignorance of the learned. Interchange on Educational Policy, 13, 68-73. Jensen, A. R. (1974). Interaction of level I and level II abilities with race and socioeconomic status. Journal of Educational Psychology, 66, 99-111. Koivutari, A. M. (1987). Question level and cognitive processing: Dimensions of questions and answers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 8, 101-120. Osgood, C. E. (1953). Method and theory in experimental psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Author’s Address: English Department, University of Guam, Mangilao, GU 96923

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THE FORUM The TESOL Quarterly invites commentary on current trends or practices in the TESOL profession. It also welcomes responses or rebuttals to any articles or remarks published here in The Forum or elsewhere in the Quarterly.

Replication in Applied Linguistics Research TERRY SANTOS California State University, Los Angeles

In a 1986 article in the TESOL Quarterly, Grant Henning reported on the number of quantitative and nonquantitative research articles that had appeared in the Quarterly and Language Learning at 5-year intervals between 1970 and 1985. Each 5-year interval showed an increase in the number of quantitative articles published in the two journals (8 in 1970, 17 in 1975,30 in 1980,39 in 1985), which, as Henning noted, represented “a kind of coming of age of a discipline” (p. 704). While the trend toward quantitative research in applied linguistics has continued, there is an aspect of it which has scarcely begun: replication. What is considered standard procedure in other disciplines that hypothesize, quantify, and generalize is ignored in ours. Of the more than 100 quantitative studies that have appeared in the TESOL Quarterly and Language Learning in the last 15 years, I find none that has been replicated (in those journals) or that is itself explicitly a replication. 1 The traditional absence of such studies constitutes a serious weakness in our research efforts. As McMillan and Schumacher (1984) point out in their textbook, Research in Education, the weakest argument is based only on what the researchers say, not what they do or show . . . . A stronger argument is made when it can be demonstrated that certain methods and techniques were used to control 1 An apparent exception is a study of French negation by Cividanes and Valian (1965). The

authors, however, do not call their work a replication, nor do they draw enough direct connections to the study upon which theirs is based (de Boysson-Bardies, 1976) to qualify it unequivocally as a replication. Interestingly, studies appearing in this issue of the TESOL Quarterly (Carrell, Pharis, and Liberto) and the next (Jonz) report replications. Carrell, Pharis, and Liberto note that they have already replicated the study described here with lower level students. Part of Jonz’ research involves replication of an earlier study reported in the Quarterly (Bachman, 1985).

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threats to internal validity, and still stronger arguments are made when replications by other researchers verify the results. The strongest type of argument is made when reasoning, methods, and replications are combined. (p. 367) We have reached the point in applied linguistics where there is enough research to make replication of some of it not only worthwhile, but also necessary to advance the field. Having recently completed a replication (Santos, 1988), I offer some observations on designing and implementing such studies. SELECTION I chose to replicate a study (Butler-Wall, 1983) that had been conducted with native speakers for the purpose of collecting baseline data for comparison with nonnative speakers. That is, although the idea of replicating the study with nonnative speakers had been built into the original research, it had not been done. Thus, this project seemed an ideal choice for replication. Such purposive design, however, is rare in our field; thus, selection for replication is more frequently a matter of evaluation. EVALUATION With replication in mind, one develops a sharper eye in reading research reports. The question is one of feasibility. Has the study been designed, conducted, and presented in such a way that it can be replicated without great difficulty, or are there small omissions? Some examples of good candidates for replication from recent issues of the TESOL Quarterly are Crookes and Rulon (1988), Dunkel (1988), August (1987), Hansen-Strain (1987), Light, Xu, and Mossop (1987), Brown and Hilferty (1986), and Brock (1986). Diverse as these studies are in topic and length, they share the qualities of clarity. BENEFITS The most obvious benefit of replication is to the discipline. Research is an accretive process; it is the accumulation and consolidation of knowledge over time. Replication of research confirms or calls into question existing findings; without it, a discipline consists of scattered hypotheses and insufficiently substantiated generalizations. Do we not acknowledge the limitations of single studies when we regularly end our articles with the call for further research? 700

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But there are additional benefits. Replications promote communication between and among researchers adding to the sense of community in the field. It serves as a reminder to researchers to be as explicit as possible in reporting on their work, and sharpens one’s critical faculty in reading those reports. Finally, replicating is an excellent way for graduate students to gain experience in doing research and to share their results with others, as do graduate students in the sciences as a matter of course during their training.2 If, as I hope, replication of research becomes common practice in our field, journals such as the TESOL Quarterly and Language Learning might consider devoting a separate section to it on a semiregular basis. This would provide a forum for dissemination and affirm the place of replication in our research. It would also represent another kind of coming of age of a discipline. REFERENCES August, D. L. (1987). Effects of peer tutoring on the second language acquisition of Mexican American children in elementary school. TESOL Quarterly, 21, 717-736. Brock, C. A. (1986). The effects of referential questions on ESL classroom discourse. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 47-58. Brown, J. D., & Hilferty, A. (1986). Listening for reduced forms. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 759-763. Butler-Wall, B. (1983). Optional syntax in oral discourse: Evidence from native speakers of English. In C. Campbell, V. Flashner, T. Hudson, & J. Lubin (Eds.), Proceedings of the Los Angeles second language research forum (Vol. II, pp. 18-47), Los Angeles: Department of English, ESL Section, University of California. Cividanes, C. J., & Valian, V. (1985). Memory for French negation by students of French. Language Learning, 35, 165-180. Crookes, G., & Rulon, K. A. (1988). Topic and feedback in native-speaker/ nonnative-speaker conversation. TESOL Quarterly, 22, 675-681. de Boysson-Bardies, B. (1976). Negation et performance linguistique. The Hague: Mouton. Dunkel, P. (1988). The content of L1 and L2 students’ lecture notes and its relation to test performance. TESOL Quarterly, 22, 259-281. Hansen-Strain, L. (1987). Cognitive style and first language background in second language test performance. TESOL Quarterly, 21, 565-569. Henning, G. (1986). Quantitative methods in language acquisition research. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 701-708. Light, R. L., Xu, M., & Mossop, J. (1987). English proficiency and academic performance of international students. TESOL Quarterly, 21, 251-261. 2A

number of students in the TESL and Applied Linguistics Department at UCLA have carried out replications for their MA theses (Donna Brinton, personal communication).

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McMillan, H., & Schumacher, S. (1984). Research in education: A conceptual introduction. Boston: Little, Brown. Santos, T. (1988, March). The effect of task on the syntax in oral discourse of nonnative speakers of English. Paper presented at the 22nd Annual TESOL Convention, Chicago, IL.

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