Individual Freedom in Language Teaching. Christopher Brumfit
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procedures, or particular ways of thinking. It is not just a physical event and a mental event, but an emotional one, and even sometimes a spiritual event. But it can only demonstrate these qualities because of the medium of language: however technical the content, however good the visuals, however spirited the delivery, it is crucially a linguistic event.
And linguistic events constantly surprise us. Here is an example which is outside the major preoccupations of linguistics. None the less, Figure 1.1 shows a text that starkly illustrates some of our problems.
This is a written text, but its message is puzzling and opaque. It is a genuine piece of evidence, the notes of one of my previous MA students (on the role of language in teacher education, as it happens) for her essay answer to an examination question (quoted with her permission). But what kind of language is this itself? How does a student arrive at such an independent and idiosyncratic piece of literacy? What is the relationship between this and the normal language (and the normal education) she has received? Discussion with the student revealed that she associates the images she has sketched with concepts to be used in the essay, but the associations are unique to herself, depending on contingent events in her own personal history. Yet this private ‘language’ illustrates one aspect of normal language which is little discussed: the ways in which the concepts represented in language possess rich associations that are purely personal to individuals. Lurking behind the shared code of ‘normal’ language lies a second code of personal associations, like those illustrated here, only partially perceived even by the writers or speakers themselves. The uniqueness of our individual experience colours the uniqueness of our individual understanding. Yet the code used to communicate these is shared.
Much has been written on the relationships between language and learning, but this example should remind us that for every generalization we attempt to make in our textbooks and our teaching, there will be thousands of individuals using language for their own purposes, with their own devices and methods, confounding our general and abstract pronouncements with their own precise and concrete instances. As in any exploration centred on human beings, the fact of our individual self-consciousness destabilizes the response and confuses the questioner. Each unexpected example makes us ask whether we have interpreted our own practice accurately or completely, and each time we do that our certainty is undermined. Certainty becomes the enemy of truth.
The risks that are being hinted at here can be more explicitly illustrated by considering the relationship between any descriptive discipline and a social and institutionalized practice such as education. Education is specifically concerned with intervention by one part of society in the lives of others. Such intervention is meant to be positive rather than negative, and safeguards of various kinds are provided to ensure that unsatisfactory intervention is avoided. But the mechanisms for intervening and the mechanisms for safeguarding are themselves part of the process of education, and have to be taken into account when the relationship between research and practice is examined.
As a field of study, ‘education’ tries to improve the quality of education provision in two related ways. First, the attempt to understand processes of education, in general and in particular, is needed both as part of our need to understand our environment and in order to inform discussion of educational policy. When it works successfully, this activity should lead – though often indirectly and after a long time lag – to more sensitive policy making at local and national levels, and to improved methods of teaching particular areas of the curriculum. Second, the attempt to develop appropriate teaching procedures, through experimentation with new materials and techniques and arising out of dissatisfaction with the old ones, leads simultaneously to criticism of current models of learning and teaching and to greater support for the teaching profession in its task within the educational system. Thus development, enquiry, improvement, and critique operate simultaneously and interactively.
Figure 1.1: MA student’s notes (reproduced with permission)
This is of course an idealized picture, though it is difficult to see how we can afford to be content with much less. And, indeed, it does seem to be a realizable ideal, as long as researchers, teachers, advisers, materials writers and other practitioners can interchange roles, collaborate, and have effective administrative support for such close relationships. These are practical needs, but they should not obscure the epistemological difficulties also associated with achievement of such integration.
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