| >
return to program
Title
Making Skill-Getting and Skill-Using a Reality : A Suggested Framework
Presenters
Dr. Amrendra Kumar Sharma
Dr. Vijay Singh Thakur
Abstract
Nowadays, in the era of globalization, every monolingual society is attempting to become bilingual in EFL classrooms. As Mackey’s typology of bilingual education (1970) suggests, the “language-switch” in these classes creates a “pseudo-bilingual” situation, where social, linguistic, cultural, and pedagogic gaps can have major implications to the task of educational/academic planning and implementation. Among many important pedagogical considerations, the need for a practically viable framework to fill these gaps is always felt by the teachers to help activate Wilga Rivers’ (1976) notions of “skill-getting’ and “skill-using’ in EFL classrooms, which otherwise remain ‘ideals’ rather than the ‘reality’.
Drawing from the pedagogical implications of Cummins (1988), Genesee (1987), and Swain and Lapkin(1982), this workshop suggests a simple and viable framework of using the local newspaper materials to address the core concern of the title in the EFL classrooms as an “immersion” bilingual programme, to use Genesee’s (1987) concept, that will involve ‘home-school language switch’ of ‘dive at the shallow-end and gradually move towards the deep-end’.
The presenters will demonstrate as to how the most desirable role of an EFL teacher to achieve the functional use of language through authentic materials could be achieved exploiting certain learner-friendly communicative classroom applications of the source material. The workshop will involve the participants in brainstorming sessions, cooperative attempts in tasks/activities, thinking and linking of ideas, etc.
Keywords – skill-getting, skill-using, language switch, ‘pseudo-bilingual’ situation, immersion’ bilingual programme, and authentic material
References
Cummins, J. (1988). Second language acquisition within bilingual education programmes. In. L. Beebe (ed.), Issues in second language acquisition : multiple perspective. New York : Newburry House.
Genesee, F. (1987). Learning through two languages: studies of immersion and bilingual education. Cambridge, Mass.: Newburry House.
Mackey, F. W. (1970). A typology of bilingual education. In Foreign language annals, 3: 596-608.
Rivers, Wilga, M. (1976). Speaking in many tongues. Rowley, Mass.: Newburry House. pp. 109-30.
Bios:-
Amrendra K Sharma is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Dhofar University, Salalah , Oman . He did his MA in Linguistics for ELT at Lancaster University and earned his Ph.D. degree by writing a dissertation in the area of Language Acquisition and Language Testing at Bhagalpur University. He also studied for PGCTE and PGDTE at CIEFL, Hyderabad successfully. He published a book entitled Teaching and Testing Grammar and some articles in the areas of ELT and Linguistics. He has a wide teaching experience of about more than two and a half decades in India and abroad. At present, he has been teaching Linguistics and ELT courses at the bachelor level. He is journal editors for English as an International Language Journal and Chinese EFL Journal.
Vijay Singh holds an earned doctorate in Applied Linguistics. He has been teaching Language, Communication and Linguistics courses for about two decades now. His research interests include TESOL Pedagogy and Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. Presently, he is teaching linguistics courses to BA students at Dhofar University, Sultanate of Oman.
He is also associated with The Journal of English as an Internatiaonal Language, The Chinese EFL Journal, The Maritime English Journal, and The South Asian Journal of Postcolonial English Language Pedagogy in different editorial capacities.
contact asian_efl_journal@yahoo.com
|
xx