Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

190 Language Diversity in the ClassroomIn situations of necessity it is clear that the efforts of the school aredriven and reinforced by extra-educational forces. Conversely, wherenecessity is not a feature, schools must act more in isolation and, needlessto say, their task is much more difficult. These simple facts account formany of the disparities observed in the success of language teaching andlearning. One need not be a Solomon to see that there are moredifficulties teaching German in Iowa than in Nijmegen. In the Iowas ofthe world and there are many of them, especially in anglophonecommunities the difficulty of creating an instrumental need for foreignlanguages means that language attitudes may become more importantthan in the Nijmegens (see below). Here, of course, schools have oftendone a poor job. Traditional classes, with their emphasis upon grammarand writing skills, have often made the learning of languages a passive,receptive matter for students. This is hardly likely to induce in pupils anysense that learning German is a different sort of exercise than learningtrigonometry or ancient history. It does nothing to reduce the artificialityof a classroom in which teachers and pupils routinely but ratherunnaturally use a language that is neither their maternal variety norone that can be put to any immediate use. It is, additionally, neither anextension of the way first languages are acquired where communicationis stressed and where grammatical refinements come afterwards nor a representation of normal, interactive conversation. Modernmethods have attempted to remedy this. The chief development is toencourage a more ‘natural’ conversational interplay and there have beenreal strides made here. But, without going into the large literature onmethods that is peripheral to my present purpose, it can be appreciatedthat school language learning will always either benefit from externallyimposed necessity or suffer for the lack of it.The perceived importance of attitude and motivation in languagelearningexercises, and the enduring difficulties in encouraging andmaintaining interest in classroom settings, have led to a specialistliterature on language attitudes (or beliefs, of course: see above). I amnot closely concerned here with the technicalities of this literature; goodoverviews can be found in Dörnyei and Schmidt (2001), Dörnyei (2005)and, especially, Dörnyei and Ushioda (2009). The latter comprises anexcellent treatment, in 18 chapters, by all the important currentresearchers in the field. Beyond the introductory and concludingchapters, the two editors also provide substantive chapters themselves;additionally, there are noteworthy contributions by MacIntyre, Clément,Kormos, Segalowitz, Noels and many others. For recent treatments thatembed discussions of attitude and motivation in the broader language