Teaching particular languages English

Abstract

This paper reports on teachers' attitudes to the use of literature in the EFL classroom. The study was designed to explore teachers' thoughts and feelings about using this resource given its increasing prominence in published materials, in particular to find out what background knowledge, skills and qualities are required to exploit the resource effectively and whether any specialist training in the teaching of literature is needed. To explore this, an interview schedule was drawn up and interviews conducted with 20 teachers on various courses at IALS. It was found that although many of the teachers did not feel the need for a specialist course in literature for EFL, most of them would welcome more background knowledge to increase their confidence in handling literary text. The paper examines the reasons for this and concludes with some suggestions for teacher development in this area. The use of languages other than English in schooling is a subject of great controversy in the U.S., pitting those who hold assimilationist views (favouring English-only) against those who hold cultural pluralist view (favouring inclusion of the native language). A study of nine exemplary K-12 programmes for language minority students in which the primary language of showed that the incorporation of students' native languages in instruction need not be an all-or-nothing phenomenon. The use of the native language appears so compelling that it emerges even when policies and assumptions mitigate against it. Teachers who are monolingual speakers not the languages their students' native in many to serve a variety of educationally desirable functions. This explores the complexities of the uses of students' native languages in schooling, describes and illustrates various ways these languages were used in the English-based but multilingual programmes, and argues that programmes for language minority students should be reconceptualised to move beyond the emotional and politically heated debate that opposes English-only instruction to native language instruction.