Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education by Nat Bartels

GREGORY 219literature courses over linguistics courses in language programs, it is important to makeour applied linguistics courses relevant. We need not only to assess the learning of ourteachers-in-training, but also to assess the course content itself to ensure that we aregiving time to the KAL that our trainees really need to know in order to function in thework place and in order to plan an overall curriculum that makes sense according to theneeds of our student population. The results of this study, although qualitative in nature,have shown me that if we do not spend sufficient time with a concept in class and allotspecific and sufficient time to every concept in the form of a project that helps thestudents make the information their own, then we simply cannot assume that the studentswill somehow learn it. Just because a concept is mentioned in the textbook or ispresented in a lecture and just because WE know it is important, nothing makes moreclear to the student that something is important than the time and energy that theinstructor devotes to it. If I had remained at the university where this study wasconducted, I would have pushed to have three courses for teacher preparation within theforeign language department divided as per the following: (1) KAL for future teachers,(2) second language acquisition, and (3) teaching Spanish – processing instruction forsyntax, morphology and phonetics. I maintain that this three course sequence is theminimum that any teacher-training program should require of its credential candidates.I am reminded of a workshop I once attended entitled, “I taught it but they didn’tlearn it”. As applied linguists in teacher-training programs, we must take the emphasisoff of what ‘we teach’ and put it where it belongs... on what the teachers-in-traininglearn. We must design our courses keeping in mind how to help all future teachersachieve the learning outcomes we have until recently only assumed for the A students.NOTESi By ‘survey,’ I mean an introduction to the notion that grammar is more than prescriptive grammar plus shortunits on phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. (The course description, written by aliterature professor, called for an introduction to historical linguistics and sociolinguistics as well. I tried thatfor one semester and quickly eliminated those two units.)iiProcessing instruction contrasts with mechanical drills in which students perform grammatical manipulationsin many cases without having to understand what they are doing. It involves providing input that requires thelearners to focus on form, in other words, to pay attention to one grammatical structure at a time.iii There was no formal requirement that the courses be taken in sequence. All that I could do was to include inthe syllabus of the second course that the objective was to put into practice information supposedly obtainedfrom the previous course.iv The novice teachers viewed videos of second semester Spanish students.REFERENCESGuiora, A. (1972). Construct validity and transpositional research: Toward an empirical study ofpsychoanalytical concepts. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 13, 139-50.loup, G., Boustagui, E., El Tigi, M. & Moselle, M. (1994). Reexamining the critical period hypothesis. Studiesin Second Language Acquisition, 16, 73-98.