Art and Artistry in ELT

Alan Maley, UK

Alan Maley has been involved in ELT for over 40 years. He has lived and worked in 10 countries, including China, India, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. He is series editor for the Oxford Resource Books for Teachers, and has published over 30 books and numerous articles. E-mail: yelamoo@yahoo.co.uk

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Introduction
Precursors
Keywords
How might it be done?
A. The matter
B. The methods
C. The manner
Concluding remarks
References

Introduction

The immediate stimulus for this article came from a recent book by Peter Lutzker (2007). Its title is ‘The Art of Foreign Language Teaching: Improvisation and Drama in Teacher Development and Language Learning.’ In it, he describes in fascinating detail how he tapped into the skills of a professional clown (in the Jacques Lecoq tradition) to foster teacher development.

‘It is the clown’s complete lack of knowledge of what will happen, coupled with his complete openness and receptivity to what is occurring on stage, which exemplifies that state of attentiveness upon which creative and fluid response in a classroom are also based.’ Lutzker. 2007:184.

In the second part of the book, he describes the learning processes and experiences of students preparing to put on a play at school over a 5-month period, and the personal and linguistic benefits associated with that.

One of his major motivations for writing the book was to counter the currently prevailing, so-called ‘scientific’, approach to language learning, with its emphasis on objectives, predictable outcomes, testing and assessment, and the rest. He contrasts such ‘scientific’ approaches with intuitive/aesthetic approaches. (It is no accident that he himself is a teacher in a Waldorf School inspired by the educational philosophy of Rudolph Steiner, with its emphasis on the arts as a central part of education.) To quote him,

‘The quality of sensory/affective experience has come to play an insignificant role in societies increasingly shaped by the exponential increase in the quantity of information available. Thus, unsurprisingly, the pressures on schools to increase the quantity of material that has to be learned in the same (or shorter!) period of time have been continually increasing. At the same time, a widespread decline in perceptual capabilities has concurrently been recognized by some educators as one of the most critical and pressing problems of Western society.’ ( Lutzker. 2007 :458)

Precursors

There is already much support, theoretical and practical, for what I would term art and artistry in education, some from ELT and some from outside it. We can note work in philosophy and education in general, in the domain of applied linguistics, in feeder fields such as drama, and in the area of practical pedagogical application in ELT itself. Space does not allow a detailed discussion but I would suggest the following form a large part of the backdrop for an aesthetics of ELT.

• Philosophy of education:

The work of William James, Ernst Weber, John Dewey and Carl Rogers all powerfully support an aesthetic vision for education.

‘Psychology is a science and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves.’ James.1962:3.

‘The teacher doesn’t use words like a writer but like an improviser. The educator is like a creative artist, speaker actor or rather – a spontaneous poet who has to create both text and style of presentation in one and the same moment.’ Weber. 1907: 233.

‘The hostility to association of fine art with normal processes of living is a pathetic, even a tragic, commentary on life as it is ordinarily lived. Only because that life is usually so stunted, aborted, slack or heavy laden, is the idea entertained that there is some inherent antagonism between the process of normal living and creation and enjoyment of works of aesthetic art.’ Dewey. 1980: 50.

More recently, Elliot Eisner ( 1985), Seymour Sarasan (1999), Lawrence Stenhouse (1985 ), Parker Palmer (1998), Gordon Allport (1983), Jerome Bruner (1991,1996) and Louis Rubin (1985) have reinforced this view of education.

( Re. the factory and assembly line metaphor of education)
‘Such an image of education requires that schools be organised to prescribe, control, and predict the consequences of their actions, that those consequences be immediate and empirically manifest and that they be measurable.’ Eisner 1985: 356-7

‘…efficiency is largely a virtue for the tasks we don’t like to do; few of us like to eat a great meal efficiently, or to participate in a wonderful conversation efficiently, or indeed to make love efficiently. What we enjoy the most, we linger over. A school system designed with an overriding commitment to efficiency may produce outcomes that have little enduring quality. Children, like the rest of us, seldom voluntarily pursue activities for which they receive little or no satisfaction. Experiencing the aesthetic in the context of intellectual and artistic work is a source of pleasure that predicts best what students are likely to do when they can do whatever they would like to do.’ Eisner. 2002: xiii

‘Through the artistry of the teacher, the learner acquires a knowledge which is not teachable, but only learnable.’ Lutzker. 2007:17.

‘Teachers have been taught that teaching is instrumental but improving education is not about improving teaching as a delivery system.’ Stenhouse. 1985:110.

‘Teachers must be educated to develop their art, not to master it, for the claim to mastery merely signals the abandoning of aspiration. Teaching is not to be regarded as a static accomplishment like riding a bicycle or keeping a ledger; it is like all arts of high ambition, a strategy in the face of an impossible task.’ Stenhouse. 1985: 123-124.

‘Since attitudes have a profound effect on teacher behaviour, it is curious that teacher training has do often ignored them.’ Rubin 1985: 41-2.

‘Like it or not, and some do not like it, the teacher as performing artist is faced with a terribly complex and difficult task that all those in the conventional performing arts confront: how do you put yourself into a role and then enact it in ways that instruct and move an audience, fulfilling the expectation of the audience that they have in some way learned something about themselves and their world?’ Rubin 1985:54.

• General educational dissenters

The 1970’s in particular were characterised by a number of unconventional thinkers on education – most of whom have been buried under the avalanche of results- and efficiency-obsessed views we now live with. John Holt (1964), Neil Postman (1993), Charles Weingartner (1976), Sybil Marshall (1970), Sylvia Ashton-Warner(1986), Everett Reimer (1972), Paulo Freire (1970), Ivan Illich (1973) and a host of others were putting a more humanistic and aesthetically-aware view of education.

• Feeder fields

The work of Timothy Gallwey (1986), Mihalyi Czikszentmihaly (1990), Howard Gardner (1985), Donald Schon (1987), Stephen Nakmanovitch (1990) , Daniel Goleman (1996), Dorothy Heathcote (Wagner,1979) and Patsy Rodenburg (1992) offers important lateral views on the matter, drawing on drama and theatre, the arts in general, creativity theory (Koestler ( ), Storr ( ), personal development models and applied psychology.

• Applied linguistics

Both Jakobson (1960) and Jespersen (1904) promoted the idea of an aesthetic approach with atmosphere and attitude at its centre.

‘Teach in the right way, then there will be life and love in it all, and when the examination comes your pupils will know more than if your teaching from the very beginning had been fettered by examination requirements.’ Otto Jespersen. 1904: 9

More recently, Arnold (1999), Cook (2000), Carter (2004), Crystal (1998), Freeman (2000), Widdowson (2000) and others have also supported a more affect-related, playful, artistic view of language teaching and learning.

• ELT practitioners

Here too there are abundant examples of those uncomfortable with an excessively product-oriented approach to ELT. Space does not allow me to do justice to them all but the work of Mario Rinvolucri (1988, 2005), Jill Hadfield (1992) , Bernard Dufeu (1994), Andrew Wright (2008), Alan Maley (2000, 2005, 2007) and Brian Tomlinson (1998, 2003) are among the many practitioners to have offered an alternative view to the currently prevailing one.

It is clear then, that a counter-current is still alive and well. It is not however articulated into a single, unified, though multi-facetted, approach. These voices therefore tend to become fragmented, single instances which go largely unheard except by a few devotees. Such approaches are all too often regarded as optional, wet-Friday-afternoon peripherals. The real change I am advocating here is to bring together the many separate threads of artistry and weave them into a seamless garment, and to make them central to what we do.

Keywords

Given the relative vagueness of the terms ‘art’ and ‘artistry’, it seemed useful to list a number of keywords relating to these notions. Here is a preliminary list:

Complex notions like art and artistry defy easy definition. That is why I have resorted to Wittgenstein’s idea of ‘family resemblances’ (Wittgenstein 1963). In any instance of art or artistry we will not find all these qualities present – but the overall pattern of instances will bring them all into play at one time or another. I am arguing that teaching/learning practices which aim to foster these qualities will also be characterised by more effective and more durable acquisition.

How might it be done?

One way of articulating such an aesthetic approach would be to set out what its content might be (the Matter), the procedures it might deploy (the Methods), and the psychological feel of it (the Manner).

A. The matter

Here I am referring to the inputs to the learning process. In an aesthetic approach, I would anticipate that there would be a far bigger weightage of the following types of artistic input:

• Visual images in the form of genuine art. These might include classical ‘high’ art, as well as contemporary more exploratory forms such as those promoted in recent years by the Turner Award.
• Music of all kinds, not simply the use of pop songs. Music can serve as an indirect as well as a direct stimulus to learning. Indeed it is a central component of innovative approaches such as Suggestopaedia. A wide range of instrumental, orchestral, choral and solo vocal styles would be deployed.
• A wide range of non-referential, imaginative texts would be used, with a high proportion of figurative language, requiring representational interpretation. In short, literature, including stories both for telling and for reading, ranging from authentic graded readers to classics and everything in between.
• Theatre and drama, in all its aspects; voice, movement, scenery, etc. would play an important role. Drama is a uniquely powerful way of integrating all aspects of language (including non-verbal language) and of taking account of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1985) and sensory learning preferences.
• Moving images in the form of film, DVD and video would form an important part of the input.
• Student-made inputs would be an integral part of the input: imaginative texts created by one group of students for use with another, artwork and books, photographs taken in the community, student videos, websites, blogs, etc.

B. The methods

Here I am not referring to the concept of ‘method’ as a rigid set of procedures to be rigorously applied but rather to generic types of activity.

• Project work. The engagement of students in projects, however modest, would be a major form of activity.
• Ensemble work. Here I am referring to shared commitment to a production of some kind – from the ‘orchestration’ of a poem or text by small groups (as in Reader’s Theatre), to rehearsed sketches, performed stories and even full-length plays (as in Lutzker’s book, cited earlier). The degree of personal and linguistic investment by students in such work is widely attested, as are the benefits of the formation of a learning community.
• Autonomous engagement. Personal reflection, research, writing and reading (including massive quantities of Extensive Reading) would be an essential methodological tool. We know that most useful learning takes place outside the classroom, not in. This kind of work would be capitalizing on notions of ‘deep processing’. (Craik and Lockhart. 1972)
• Multi-dimensional activities. Activities involving not just language skills and thinking but also movement, physical engagement through the eyes, the nose, the taste buds, hearing, touch, the memory and dreams would form an important component.
• Problem-solving. The aim would be to make much of the learning discovery-centred rather than telling-centred. This also links with the ‘deep processing’ idea mentioned above.
• Playfulness. Activities would always be designed with a playful element, not simply because they would be more enjoyable but also because play is a major factor in learning anything. (Crystal 1998)

C. The manner

In describing below what I feel to be essential qualities of the way in which teachers demonstrate their artistry, I am aware of the dangers of seemingly naïve and ‘woolly’ self-indulgence. Yet, as those of us know who have the experience of entering other teachers’ classrooms, the tone or atmosphere of the class is immediately palpable. There is a ‘something in the air’, even if it is silence, which tells us about the quality of what is going on. For me, it is a central task for the teacher to create that enabling atmosphere, without which no enduring learning takes place.

• Atmosphere and Flow. I referred earlier to Czikszentmihalyi’s work on ‘flow’. Flow experiences are characterised by a kind of timeless quality – where the participants are so absorbed in the activity of the moment that they lose all sense of the passage of time, of themselves, of anything outside it. They are lost in the action, just as we can become lost in a good book. In an aesthetic view of learning, it is the teacher’s prime task to set up an atmosphere which facilitates flow.
• Openness, experiment and risk. Also key to the manner is the establishment of an attitude of openness: to the language, to the learning process itself, to others in the group and to oneself. In such a psychological environment, there is encouragement of experimentation and risk-taking, in the confidence that there will be mutual support, whatever the outcome.
• Choice. The opportunity to make choices also contributes to the overall quality of the learning. This is not to say that learners do just what they like, when they like. Choice implies responsibility and discipline but this is best established voluntarily, from within, rather than imposed from without. Students might decide on a particular project, and on how to go about it, on the understanding that the outcomes and consequences are their responsibility.
• Mutual trust and support. Errors or perceived lack of success are not tarred with the brush of blame. The manner in which the class operates ensures that people support each other, recognising that everyone needs other people at some time.

Concluding remarks

I am aware that what I am proposing here may sound fanciful and unworkable in a world governed by measurement, graded objectives and the like. However, I persist in the belief, based on over 40 years of experience, that it is the quality of the learning experience that ultimately counts, not the technicity. And that a texture of learning permeated by the art of its inputs and methods and by the artistry of its teachers is best calculated to offer that quality. Basta volere!

References

Allport, Gordon. (1983) Becoming: Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Arnold, Jane (1999) Affect in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ashton-Warner, Sylvia. (1986) Teacher. London: Touchstone.

Bruner, Jerome. (1991) The Process of Education. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.

Bruner, Jerome. (1996) The Culture of Education. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Carter, Ronald. (2004) The Art of Common Talk. London: Routledge.

Cook, Guy. (2000) Language Play: Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Craik, F.I.M. and R.S. Lockhart ( 1972) ‘Levels of processing: a framework for memory research.’ Journal for verbal learning and Verbal Behaviour II: 617-84.

Crystal, David. (1998) Language Play. London: Penguin Books.

Czikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Row.

Davis, Paul and Mario Rinvolucri. (1988) Dictation: New methods, new possibilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Dewey, John. (1980) Art as Experience. New York: Putnam’s Sons.

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Eisner, Elliot W. (1985) The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs. New York: Macmillan.

Eisner, Elliot W. (2002) The Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven: Yale UP.

Freeman, Donald. (2000) ‘Telling Teaching and the Dilemma of Doing,’ in old.hltmag.co.uk Year 2, Issue 1, Jan. 2000.

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