Revisiting the Role of the Foreign Language Teacher in an Input Poor Environment. Why Bother?

Stacey Winch, Australia

Stacey Winch is a Sessional Academic at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, where she teaches Professional Communication units on University Entrance programs. She has much experience teaching English for Academic Purposes and on ESL Teacher Training programs. She has worked in South Korea and China and is currently involved in research for a Doctorate in Creative Arts. E-mail: s.winch@qut.edu.au

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Introduction
Background
Impact
Purpose
References

Introduction

Imagine teaching a foreign language in a situation where you, a few texts, and radio access to a daily language program are the only native-speaker resources that the students have. A world where there is no easily accessible Internet to gain free resources, where there is one English language movie on TV a week, with movies being repeated every few weeks. In this world, the students outnumber the foreign language teacher by hundreds and even thousands, and the library shelves, mostly empty, contain no other books in the target foreign language other than the set texts. This is an example of an input poor environment, which is often found in developing countries and rural and isolated areas.

Background

Many years ago, I undertook a research project regarding foreign language learning in P.R. China. Before commencing a one year stay there, I spent much time reading about the education system. I firstly looked at the history of foreign language learning and in particular, the teaching and learning of English, and secondly, past and current educational approaches and policies. As the research was to be conducted for a Master in Education (TESOL), I searched for a topic that would help to fill a gap in the knowledge. This reading led me to a barely touched issue: foreign language learning in an input poor environment. Kouraogo (1993, p.167) defined input-poor environments as ‘language learning contexts where learners have little opportunity to hear or read the language outside or even inside the classroom’. His research focussed on the use of language learning strategies to overcome ‘the perverse effects of poor teaching, contagious peer interlanguage and all the adverse conditions’ (Kouraogo, 1993, p.169). I took a different approach to this topic, considering firstly my role as the foreign language teacher, and secondly the strengths of the subjects’ abilities. First, there was the stated expectation that the role of the foreign language teacher was to compensate for an otherwise lack of exposure to real-life language by providing the opportunity for students to engage with a native speaker of English while studying literature. Second, the students involved in the research, second year English majors, all had well-developed language learning strategies (although this was not the case for the majority of the other students on campus who were not English majors but for whom English studies were compulsory). These included strategies for engaging in the language as much as possible, even creating opportunities, such as a weekly English salon or English corner. The issue was simply that there were not enough opportunities to fulfil student desire, and there were no further reliable resources. Whatever they had, the students used exhaustively. Consequently, I chose to explore how I, as the foreign language teacher, could maximise my role to further enhance student exposure to real language use beyond the classroom. This lead to experimentation regarding the development and usefulness of extracurricular activities initiated by and/or including the foreign language teacher (Winch & Adamson, 2004).

Impact

That was over 10 years ago. From time to time I revisit this topic, to review contributions being made by others in similar situations. There have been few, and none that I am aware of that pursue the use of extracurricular activities. From my own perspective, I had intended to pursue the topic in a larger way, as research for a PhD in Education. While I did find potential supervisors who were enthusiastic about involvement in the project, I was advised by the Head of School in the Faculty of Education that, while the subject was useful and interesting, it would not encourage funding: it was not ‘sexy’. That was a revelation for me as to why few others have picked up this topic: it is not going to make anyone any money.

Purpose

And so now I revisit the topic in this forum of peers. I ask readers to consider their own experiences of teaching a foreign language in situations which are less than ideal in terms of providing adequate opportunities for students to engage in meaningful language use. In my research, I tested the theory that the creation of extracurricular activities would provide students with more exposure to everyday, real-life language use. What are others doing, and what are the results? How can the foreign language teacher realistically compensate for an input poor environment? And is anyone really interested in a topic that will not result in a book, App or software sales? I believe that those teaching in true input poor environments are so busy doing all they can, that they may not take the time to document and share their observations with others. Teaching effectively in these less than ideal situations can require much additional work. But perhaps, if you have such experience, you can drop a note to HLT to share a story, to help keep alive this discussion begun decades ago by Kouraogo, whose hope was that further research would lead to ‘practical suggestions for teachers and learners’(1993, p.165).

References

Kouraogo, P. (1993). Language learning strategies in input-poor environments, System, 21/2, 165–173.

Winch, S. & Adamson, R. (2004). The extracurriculum in an input-poor environment, Curriculum Perspectives, 24/3, 34-42.

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