Individual Freedom in Language Teaching. Christopher Brumfit
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language use potentially threatens group solidarity and challenges personal identity, so it is always risky and value laden (Chapters 5 and 8)
• because its use is risky and value laden, language teaching and learning are bound up with ethical and social concerns that need to be openly discussed if they are not to become secret and repressive (Chapters 7, 9, and 11)
• because these complexities need open discussion, any consideration of language in education is partial unless it is prepared to call upon a range of associated disciplines to clarify the object of study: a responsible ‘linguistics of education’ cannot avoid psychological, sociological, ethical, economic, historical, political as well as pedagogical considerations (Chapters 12, 13, and 14).
The chapters of this book show an attempt to address a variety of settings and practices with these beliefs as a background.
Thus you could say that I examine the science of the study of language teaching within the art of language making. Like most people with an academic background, I believe we should try to understand our field of study as clearly as possible, through examination of empirical evidence and through clear and logical thinking. But like most experienced teachers and language users, I am all too aware that language use and language development reflect human creativity, reveal human identity, and contribute to human aspirations far beyond what can be revealed by the idealizations and generalizations that scientific procedures unavoidably impose. Anyone concerned with language is concerned with human behaviour. Anyone concerned with human behaviour must rejoice and celebrate, empathize and criticize, deplore and oppose, just as much as investigate – for human beings are creative for both good and evil; they identify with communal aspirations which are both constructive and destructive, and they use the power which language gives to dominate as well as to liberate. Amid this welter of conflicting motives and confusing values, language teachers must live – contributing their small offering to world peace and understanding, or (wittingly or unwittingly) to exploitation and suffering.
In the chapters that follow I have drawn upon a view of language which starts from the variety of uses users impose on it, but recognizes that we are partly made by our linguistic inheritance. We make language together, but who we are is partly made by language. What we receive we never hand back unchanged. In addressing key aspects of language teaching theory and practice, I have drawn upon the many disciplines that help us to clarify language and literacy practices in the world and processes of learning and teaching in, and out of, the classroom. No serious discussion of practice calls exclusively on a single discipline, but readers will find that in different chapters I tend to concentrate on philosophy (Chapters 3, 7, 14), psychology (Chapter 2), curriculum theory (Chapters 5, 9), assessment (Chapter 8), ideology (Chapter 9), political theory (Chapter 11), history (Chapter 10), while sociolinguistic and applied linguistic principles underlie most chapters. At the same time, while a few chapters (1, 3, 12, 13, 14) offer general bases for any kind of language work in education, most link for practical exemplification to particular settings or particular types of teaching. Thus second language classrooms are the prime focus of Chapters 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, and 11; mother tongue classrooms in the UK are significant in Chapters 1 and 6; higher education is concentrated on in Chapter 5, literature teaching in Chapters 7 and 8, cultural studies in Chapter 9, and teaching outside the rich industrial countries (from an African perspective) in Chapter 10.
In short, each chapter is an essay trying to integrate understandings from whatever disciplines are relevant, with specific illustration from policy and practice in a particular area of language in education. Where the argument depends on reference to scholarly literature I have provided it, but on occasions I have preferred to outline widely agreed basic issues as clearly as I can as a background to my argument, and I have not referred such uncontentious summaries to standard textbooks.
Overall this book reflects an attempt to develop bases for an educational linguistics; I am currently working on a fuller theoretical development of these ideas. But I hope that as it stands, this book offers a persuasive perspective on the ways in which we use language to educate.
CJB
Centre for Language in Education
University of Southampton
Acknowledgements
The debt I owe to past and present students and colleagues is immeasurable, both for their willingness to argue and force me to clarify, and for their persistently motivating insistence on the central role of language in the education process. I cannot name everyone from whom I have borrowed (and no doubt distorted) ideas, but people who have made specific contributions to the thinking underlying this book include Professors Michael Benton, Jill Bourne, Debbie Cameron, Ronald Carter, Guy Cook, Alan Davies, Eric Hawkins, Keith Johnson, Gunther Kress, Neil Mercer, and Robin Usher, together with George Blue, Dr Michael Grenfell, John Mountford, Elissa Mugarza, Dr Florence Myles, Dr Alison Piper, Dr Ben Rampton, Euan Reid, Alison Sealey, Michael Swan, Catherine Walter, and two anonymous readers. I have long-standing debts in thinking to Dr Dick Allwright, Alan Maley, Earl Stevick, and the late Professor David Stern. Rita Corbidge and Hazel Paul have provided strong secretarial support over the years. Above all, I have benefited from the support of Professor Henry Widdowson (who always believed a project such as this was possible and who has offered many helpful comments, though I have stubbornly failed to act on some of them). My wife, Professor Rosamond Mitchell, has provided expert knowledge, professional collaboration, and personal support, all of which I have persistently exploited. To her, and to my sons Simon and Francis I owe also many personal debts – not least that they allowed a summer holiday to be devoted to writing the first draft of this.
Material in this book has had early versions in presentations to AILA, The British Council (in Belfast, Brussels, Colombo, Ibadan, London, Madras, and Paris), BAAL, BALEAP, BERA, Cambridge University Summer Institute, IATEFL, Korean Applied Linguistics Association, London University Institute of Education, The Open University, South African Applied Linguistics Association, and Vancouver TESOL, and draws upon work which has been funded by the ESRC, University of Southampton, Yapp Educational Trust, BAAL, and my own department. Earlier versions of some of the chapters have appeared in Southampton Centre for Language in Educational Working Papers, AILA Review, ELT Documents, Franco-British Studies, Review of ELT, and British Studies in Applied Linguistics, and in edited volumes published by Oxford University Press, RELC, CILT, Macmillan,