Students' communicative behaviour in a foreign language classroom

The purpose of this paper is to give a description of the communicativity in a foreign language classroom and also of students’ communicative behaviour. Since the beginning of the 80s communication has been widely discussed as one of the main features in instructed language learning. The focus on form, that traditionally has been dominant in the language classroom, was combined or even replaced by focus on meaning and situations similar to authentic learning settings. Immersion classrooms were created to fulfil this need for natural communication and students learned the new language by using it as a means to communicate other subjects. After some time, however, several studies in the immersion classrooms showed that although the students’ communicative competence was highly developed, their grammatical skills did not measure up to those of a native speaker (Harley & Swain 1984). The traditional methods, however, did not provide students with the communicative skills that are necessary for the use of their second language outside the classroom. It is therefore necessary to find a balance between authentic communication and instruction in the classroom for the students to reach the highest possible level of L2 proficiency. Typical behaviours in traditional instruction are error correction, simplified input and a limited range of language discourse types while in more communicative settings, meaning is emphasized over form with a limited amount of error correction as a result, input is simplified by the use of contextual cues and a larger variety of discourse types is used (Lightbown & Spada 1993). The teaching situation in Swedish upper secondary schools (senior high school, Swedish gymnasium), as far as foreign languages are concerned, is still quite traditional in many places and there is generally a lack of authentic communication, even though the curriculum emphasizes the importance of communicative competence and intercultural understanding (Skolverket 1996). The purpose of this study is, therefore, to describe communication in these classrooms and establish the students’ communicative behaviour. In the classroom, several different kinds of activities occur where communication varies considerably. Typical activities will, therefore, be categorised with the intention to describe the students’ communication as distinctly as possible. It is also relevant to compare the communicative level in these different groups of activities as it will be of importance in future studies of the role of communication in the acquisition of a foreign language. The method that has been used for this purpose is an observation scheme referred to as COLT. The scheme has been adjusted for the present study as its original intention did not include the categorisation and comparison of different classroom activities

Andraspråket i utveckling

En av utmaningarna för lärare är att känna igen språkfel som en del av språkutvecklingen. Eftersom normen i klassrummet ofta är språklig korrekthet kan det vara svårt att urskilja utvecklingen. Synen på inlärarspråket som ett eget språk snarare än en sämre variant av målspråket samt kunskap om typiska drag i inlärarspråket ökar möjligheterna att se den utveckling som faktiskt sker hos eleverna, vilket kan påverka såväl elev som lärare positivt. Olika delar av språket utvecklas också på olika sätt. Ibland måste man därför plocka isär språket för att kunna identifiera förutsättningarna för utveckling. Grammatiken följer till exempel ”inbyggda” stadier medan uttalet påverkas ganska mycket av moders-målet, och ordförrådet är beroende av stora mängder inflöde. Det här kapitlet beskriver inlärarspråket och utvecklingen av morfosyntax, lexikon och fonologi för att skapa en förståelse för inlärares andraspråksutveckling

Svenska som andraspråk på språkvetenskaplig grund

För ett stort antal elever i ungdoms- och vuxenutbildning gäller det attta sig an den komplexa uppgiften att både utveckla kunskaper i olikaämnen och att erövra ett helt nytt språk: svenska. Språktillägnandetbehöver understödjas på allra bästa sätt för att nå en nivå som kan mötade höga språkliga krav som ställs inom utbildning, yrkesliv och samhälle.Detta ställer i sin tur stora krav på andraspråksundervisningen. Att lärarehar gedigna kunskaper om hur det går till att lära sig ett nytt språk ärdärför viktigare än någonsin. Andraspråksfältet är stort och kan vara svårt att navigera i när tiden förkompetensutveckling och fördjupning är begränsad. Den här boken ärtänkt att fungera som en brygga mellan andraspråksforskning och läraresundervisning i svenska som ett andraspråk. Syftet är att ge möjlighettill en språkvetenskapligt underbyggd undervisning: Hur inverkar tillexempel modersmålet på inlärningen av ett nytt språk? På vilket sätt kanlärare stärka språkutvecklingen? Vad stöds egentligen av forskningen ochvad är myt?Författaren presenterar olika språkinlärningsteorier utifrån ett svensktutbildningsperspektiv och diskuterar hur teorier och forskningsrön kankomma undervisningen till nytta – både på makronivå med organisationeni fokus och på mikronivå utifrån det enskilda klassrummet ochlärares arbete där.Svenska som andraspråk på språkvetenskaplig grund vänder sig främsttill sva-lärare, sfi-lärare och modersmålslärare

Teaching, Learning, and Student Output : A Study of French in the Classroom

Student speech production is an essential part of language learning in the foreign-language classroom. The students usually have few opportunities to use the language outside the classroom, which underscores the importance of making good use of the time spent in the classroom. Much research has shown that learner output is necessary, or at least facilitative, in language acquisition. This claim forms the basis of the Output Hypothesis, which underlies the present work. In order to investigate student output, two aspects have been taken into consideration. First, teaching – in the form of different activities and teacher input – has been studied in order to relate it to the speech produced by the students. Second, learning – as it is shown in the student output – has been investigated through longitudinal analyses. The two aspects give a comprehensive picture of what goes on in the classroom and how teaching and students’ production are related to each other. Following a review of earlier research, a presentation is given of five different analyses conducted on around 40 hours of recordings made in three classrooms in upper-secondary schools over three years and on individual recordings of eleven learners made on two different occasions. The first analysis provides an overview of the teaching method in the three classes along with a quantitative account of the student output. This analysis shows that the teaching becomes more communicative in the third year and that the students’ output increases. The second analysis investigates teacher questions and the responses they generate. The main finding here is that the students do not take the opportunities given to them to use their interlanguage, which justifies a suggestion regarding the optimal teacher question for promoting student output. The following two analyses consider the verb use by the students: the forms and functions as well as the lexicon. These analyses show that the type of activity is an important factor in generating variation in student output while frequency in the input from the teacher is mainly influential on the production of verb forms. Finally, in the last analysis the relationship between metalinguistic knowledge and production is investigated. This analysis shows that metalinguistic knowledge is not applied in production and that there is an implicational relationship between rules and production. With the investigation of how different factors interact in the classroom, an important step may be taken towards improved language teaching and student language production