Second Language Learning And Teaching: Analysis Of New Practical Chinese Reader And Basic Korean

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Background Information

In this report, approaches and techniques adopted by the two selected textbooks will be analyzed and discussed. These two textbooks are designed to teach a second language in classrooms.

One of the books chosen is ‘New Practical Chinese Reader: Textbook’. It was published in the year of 2003. The book is to be used in classrooms to teach non-Chinese speaking leaner’s Chinese language at the entry level. It emphasizes on communicative function and allow students to gain a grounding in the skills by means of a large number of drills and exercises.

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Another book is ‘Basic Korean’ which was published in 2009. It is used to teach the Korean language to English-speaking learners at the beginning level. It was written for beginners to pick up the Korean language independently and for classroom-based learning. In contrast with other Korean language textbooks whose content may include model dialogues, followed by a vocabulary list, grammar explanations and exercises, this book focuses on demonstrating jargon-free and concise grammar explanations with related exercises.

These two-course books teach conversational skills to the students of same proficiency but of different second languages. The approaches adopted to teach the speaking skills in the two books will be analyzed and evaluated in the following discussion.

Discussion

This section will focus on the analysis and evaluation of the teaching approaches used in both course books to develop the communication skill of students.

New Practical Chinese Reader: Textbook

This book consists of fourteen chapters, each chapter involves five different sections (refer to Appendix 1) which are text, phonetics and pronunciation drill, conversation practice, grammar and Chinese characters. It adopted the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach to deliver its message to the learners. The objective of the approach is to develop the ability of the learner to communicate correctly and appropriately which stresses on communicative competence (Canale, 1983). CTL appeared at a time when language teaching and learning was ready for a fundamental change in many parts of the world. It gave rise a new humanistic approach to teaching that is different from approaches such as audiolingual and situational approaches which ignored the development of interactive grammar and discourse patterns of typical speech (Bygate, 2001).

CLT emphasis the importance on the ability to identify effectively referents, time, and place (Yule, 1997). Text section of the book introduces the topics and scenes of each chapter which provides the learner with specific settings (see Appendix 2). This exposes learners to different situations and practices authentic language use with high appropriacy.

Since the inception of CLT, it has passed through different stages. In its first stage, the need to establish a syllabus consist of notion and function rather than grammatical structure was a primary concern (Richards, 2006). In the second stage, CLT focused on learner identification methods. This brought in the proposal to promote exercises with problems to be solved and ro require learners to communicate with each other in order to resolve them (Allwright, 1984), for example, group work and information-gap activities. As such, conversation practice in the book (see Appendix 3) ensures learners to master the basic linguistic structures and functions by engaging in communicative activities.

Even with the focus on communicative events, researches about communicative competence did not suggest that grammar was unimportant (Canale and Swain, 1980), rather, they identify grammatical competence within a more broadly defined communicative competence. The finding of language study (Savignon, 1971) supported that grammar instruction is not disregarded by teachers during second language studies. Instead, the substitution of structure drills in a language classroom with an emphasis on self-expression was found to be more successful in developing communicative ability without the loss of accuracy. Therefore, the grammar component of the book (see Appendix 4) with practices are designed to provide the learners with a better understanding of the Chinese language, and thus to express the most important grammatical structure and rules for sentence formation. In the case of this book, grammar was taught in Focus on form (FonF) approach which includes a focus on meaning and form that results from communicative activities (Ellis, 2002).

Phonetics and pronunciation drill allow learner to achieve a good pronunciation foundation through reading expressions in the classes (refer to Appendix 5). The fluency of speaking can be greatly improved with oral practices and task repetition (Goh, 2018).

Moreover, CLT appears to have an integration of all four skills which are listening, reading, speaking and writing. This can be shown in the characters section of the book where the characters first introduced in the text section will then be combined to form words and the learner will study the rules for constructing and writing Chinese words.

Basic Korean

This book has 25 units that sequenced and covered grammatical points according to the grammatical categories. There are exercises at the end of each unit to enhance the target grammatical points. This book is clearly adopting a grammar-based approach to teaching the second language as it comes with grammar explanations and drilling exercises. The main objective of this approach is to achieve grammatical accuracy.

Initially, it had been suggested that grammar instruction did not play a role in acquisition (Krashen, 1981), a point focused on the belief that as long as learners had sufficient access to comprehensible input and were inspired, they would be able to naturally continue with the built-in syllabus. It was believed that grammar instruction could lead to learning, but with limitations because the communicative ability was dependent on acquisition. However, subsequent researches such as the meta-analysis of 49 studies (Norris & Ortega, 2000) confirmed the overall effectiveness of grammar teaching. This implies the importance of vocabulary and grammar in the learning of a second language as to allow learners to express their intended message.

There two different approaches used in the grammar-based approach which are Focus on the form (FonF) and Focus on forms (FonFs) approach. FonF consists primarily of meaning-focused communications with an emphasis on linguistic forms while FonFs mostly focus on linguistic structures. FonFs approach is used in this book. FonFs is pre-emptive in means that it seeks to integrate CLT into a structural syllabus by selecting the targeted forms in advance (Azar, 2007). With evidence in the book (see Appendix 6), it gives the category of grammar, then provides a clear linguistic information of the rules of grammar presented with examples to help the development of learner’s interlanguage.

At the end of each unit, language exercises (refer to Appendix 7) that focus on language forms are proposed to have more practice. This builds familiarity through repetition and a variety of exercises and creates confidence and encourages the comfort level of the learner in using the second language learnt. This book shows an explicit example of PPP method of FonFs approach. PPP refers to presentation, practice and production where explanation and uses of grammar rules are presented first, then exercise is used to practice the rules learnt, lastly followed by the outputs from the learner to show their understanding and progress of learning.

FonFs approach encourages learners to engage in communicative practices to use the learnt language framework creatively. In this case, communicative practice is usually centered in the learner’s own life, this means that communication between people are about real things for a real purpose.

Conclusion

According to the model of language production (Levelt, 1989), second language speaking skills can be illustrated by three levels of processes where message conceptualization comes into the picture first, and then followed by formulation and articulation. In order to master the speaking skill of a language, content knowledge is essential for appropriate conversations. Pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar knowledge are the key to expressing yourself well while communicating with others. In the process of learning, learners need to practice increasing the automaticity of speaking in a second language. These three levels show a good learning process of the second language speaking.

As discussed above, ‘New Practical Chinese Reader: Textbook’ mainly adopted the communicative language teaching approach, and ‘Basic Korean’ mainly adopted the grammar-based approach. Since the communicative language teaching approach focuses more on fluency and accuracy while the grammar-based approach emphasizes grammatical accuracy but no focus on speaking, ‘New Practical Chinese Reader: Textbook’ is, therefore, more effective in teaching speaking skills of a second language.

Although the grammar-based approach does not have an obvious impact on the speaking skills of the second language, it is evident that the zero grammar approach was attractive but will never take place in current second language acquisition (Whitney & White, 2001).

Other than the approaches in the books to teach a second language, providing corrective feedback (CF) on targeted errors are equally important in the learning processes (Loewen & Philp, 2006). Hence teachers should provide CF to the learners immediately after an accuracy activity or at the end of a fluency activity conducted in classes. This will better help the learners to acquire the second language.

References

  1. Allwright, R. (1984). The importance of interaction in classroom language learning. Applied Linguistics, 5(2), 156-171.
  2. Azar, B. (2007). Grammar-Based Teaching: A Practitioner’s Perspective. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, 11(2).
  3. Bygate, M. (2001). Effects of task repetition on the structure and control of oral language. In M. Bygate, P. Skehan & M. Swain (Eds.), Researching pedagogic tasks: Second language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 23-48). Harlow, UK: Pearson Education.
  4. Byon, A S. (2009). Basic Korean: A grammar and workbook. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
  5. Canale, M. (1983a). From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. In J.C. Richards and R.W. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and Communication (pp.2-27). London: Longman.
  6. Canale, M. & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language Teaching and Testing. Applied Linguistics, 10.
  7. Ellis, R. (2002). The place of grammar instruction in the second/foreign curriculum. In E. Hinkel & S. Fotos (Eds.), New perspectives on grammar teaching in second language classrooms (pp. 17-34). Nahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  8. Goh, C. (2018). Learning speaking. In A. Burns & J. Richards (Eds.), The Cambridge Guide to learning English as a second language (pp. 204-212). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  9. Krashen, S. (1981). Second language acquisition and second language learning. Oxford, England: Pergamon.
  10. Levelt, W. (1989). Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  11. Liu, X. (2003). New Practical Chinese Reader: Textbook. Beijing, China: Peking Language University.
  12. Loewen, S. & Philp, J. (2006). Recasts in the adult English L2 classroom; Characteristics, explicitness, and effectiveness. The Modern Language Journal, 90(4), 536-556.
  13. Norris, J., & Ortega, L. (2000). Effectiveness of L2 instruction: S research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis. Language Learning, 50(3), 417-528.
  14. Richards, J. (2006). Communicative language teaching today (pp. 6-13). Cambridge.
  15. Savignon, S J. (1971). A study of the effect of training in communicative skills as part of a beginning college French course on student attitude and achievement in linguistic and communicative competence (pp. 26-29). University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.
  16. Whitney, N., & White, L. (2001). Team Up: Students book 1. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
  17. Yule, G. (1997). Referential Communication Tasks (pp. 36). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Eribaum Associates.

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