ESL Teaching Today

In the early 1980s, communicative language teaching  (CLT) became the most popular approach to ESL in North America. At the same time, in Europe the notional-functional approach was widely implemented. Both are still widely practiced today, either in their original form or in an adaptation. The notionalfunctional approach broke away from a reliance on grammatical structures as the organizing principle for L2 courses and focused instead on functional uses of language, such as greetings, invitations, apologies, opinions, and notions (contexts) such as shopping for groceries.

CLT emerged out of the communicative competence framework established by Canale and Swain and Stephen Krashen’s model of L2 acquisition. Krashen argued that L2 acquisition depended on exposing the learner to comprehensible input—that is, language that the learner could understand with the use of contextual clues. He suggested that the input should be at a level just slightly higher than the learner’s own proficiency. For this reason, he advocated the use of TPR in the early stages of acquisition, because the meaning of the actions and accompanying language are readily apparent. Perhaps the most contentious aspect of Krashen’s theory was the distinction he made between learning and acquisition. Krashen maintained that learning involved consciously putting into memory vocabulary and grammar, whereas acquisition was the subconscious ‘‘picking up’’ of an L2. He claimed not only that learning played a very small part in the overall development of an L2 but also that learning could not turn into acquisition. In other words, learning and acquisition were viewed as two unconnected processes, and learning simply acted as an editor of acquired spoken and written forms.

Another aspect of Krashen’s theory that was widely challenged was his claim that the only requirement for mastering an L2 is that the learner is exposed to enough comprehensible input which gradually becomes increasingly complex. Michael Long challenged Krashen’s claim, arguing that comprehensible input is a necessary but insufficient component of language acquisition and that interaction, which involves negotiation of meaning, is essential.

Many ESL teachers embraced CLT and designed lessons that provided comprehensible input but did not explicitly teach grammar. Borrowing from notionalfunctional approaches in Britain, many classroom curricula were developed around themes such as ‘‘going to the doctor’’ and functions such as ‘‘making an argument.’’ Often lessons centered on vocabulary development, role playing, and group work. Although students in CLT classrooms often became relatively fluent in English, they persisted in making grammatical errors. Eventually, applied linguists such as Swain, Richard Schmidt, and Long argued that L2 learners needed a focus on form within a communicative framework. Swain put forward the output hypothesis; she maintained that unless pushed by interlocutors, students analyze their L2 at a semantic level but pay little attention to syntactic structures. By focusing on their own output, that is, their own productions in the L2, they are pushed to become more accurate syntactically because of the feedback they receive. Similarly, Schmidt proposed the noticing hypothesis. He suggested that unless learners have certain linguistic elements brought to their attention, they will not notice them in the input; in other words, a grammatical structure that is not salient or transparent will not be acquired unless teachers instruct the students, either explicitly or by focusing their attention on that form in a task that requires its use.

Recently, some educational theorists have shifted away from viewing L2 learning as a purely psychological phenomenon and toward viewing it as a social construction. The emphasis is on language as a social practice that takes place among people as they negotiate and co-construct meanings in a range of contexts. In pedagogical situations, a sociocultural approach does not focus on language learning as an independent activity. Students are encouraged to interact, using each other as supports while creating collective and collaborative discourse relevant to their own experiences, interests, feelings, and ideas. There is also recognition that identity is inseparable from situational and cultural contexts and language. Thus, social positions and the relative power that they entail are considered to play a key role in language learning processes.
Most of the preceding discussion has focused on language classrooms, but ESL is also taught through content in K–12 settings to immigrant or aboriginal children. There is a variety of delivery methods for school-age children, including pull-out for one-onone instruction or small group work, separate ESL classrooms, and adapted lessons of subject matter that are appropriate for both ESL and native-speaking students.

Bernard Mohan and his colleagues proposed the knowledge framework approach to adjusting the basic school curriculum to make it accessible to ESL students in mainstream classrooms, while at the same time helping them to recognize how English works. Teachers are encouraged to analyze the subject matter to be taught and the students’ texts to determine which knowledge structures (classification, principles, evaluation, description, sequencing, and choice) are evident and which linguistic structures are expressed there. For example, in a science text dealing with a topic such as pollution, there are likely to be discussions of cause and effect (principles) and types of pollution (classification). Each of these knowledge structures is characterized by particular linguistic forms. Cause and effect is often represented by phrases such as is due to, because of, and as a result of. Mohan advocates the use of key visuals (e.g., time lines, flow charts, tables, diagrams) to help students see the relationships among concepts and the words that express them. Schools that have used this model have found it to be quite successful, but it is extremely time and effort intensive for individual teachers to modify their lessons along these lines.

Two other approaches that are sometimes used to teach English to K–12 learners involve dual language and bilingual programs. The former can be characterized as two-way immersion. In New Mexico, for example, there are several schools in which half the students are native English speakers and half are native Spanish speakers. The students study in both languages and develop oral and literacy skills in both. Bilingual schools are patterned after immersion schools in that subject matter is taught in the students’ first language and in English, usually a half day of each language. In Edmonton, Alberta (Canada), children can choose from more than a dozen languages that are taught in conjunction with English.
There is growing concern in some communities that students in K–12 classrooms are not becoming proficient in English. One of the most vocal advocates for ESL students is Jim Cummins, who proposed that children’s oral fluency can be misleading because they quickly learn basic interpersonal communication skills, but they take much longer to acquire cognitive academic linguistic proficiency. To achieve academically, students require up to 8 years of language support, but most school districts do not have the resources to provide the programs that ESL students need.

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