Current Theory and Knowledge for the Teaching of English. Linguistic Communications: Working Papers of the Linguistic Society of Australia, No. 12 (original) (raw)

1972, English in Australia

There are problems in the field of English teaching on at least three levels: research, teacher training, and the students. Research in the teaching of English must be preceded by research in English, language variation, and native language acquisition and by further work in descriptive linguistics. A significant problem in current language research is that the different disciplines engaging in it begin with different assumptions concerning the nature of language variation. Anthropologists and linguists consider variation normal manifestation of difference, while psychologists and educators view variation as a deviation from a norm. More emphasis should be placed on training teachers to hear, distinguish, and analyze the language of their students. Teachers must learn about the systematic nature of language, how languages differ from each other, how they change, the difference between oral and written symbolization, and the structure of communication. Techniques used today for evaluating a child's language ability frequently discriminate against nonstandard English-speaking children. It must be remembered that every child comes to the first grade with a relatively well developed and systematic language which cannot be characterized as random or illogical. More research into the problem of stigmatized speech is also needed. (PMP)