Abstract
This chapter addresses a wider range of issues in the field of English language teaching and teaching young learners than the two previous results chapters, which primarily focused on interlanguage pragmatics and TEYL. This approach was taken for two reasons: First, some of the findings from one area may be linked to another and I wanted to obtain (and subsequently provide to readers) a fuller picture of the EFL primary teaching context based on in-service teachers’ survey responses. Secondly, my discussions with teachers had made me aware that although they tended to value the exchange of ideas, materials and views very much, they were not always in a position to engage in conversations with colleagues from other schools and were sometimes wondering about good practice in other places. I hope that by addressing topics from different areas of primary ELT, in-service and pre-service teachers who may not have much opportunity to engage with others may at least be able to get some insights into what their (future) colleagues are doing, thinking about and experiencing in their classrooms.
In the following, I will first analyse and discuss components of a lesson. I will then move on to assessment. This will be followed by a discussion of skills, knowledge and competence areas. Subsequently, I will address how pupils are grouped in classroom activities. This will be followed by a discussion of pragmatic routines. Subsequent to this, I will analyse and discuss rituals at the beginning and end of the lesson. I will then focus on differentiation, followed by special needs issues, and homework. Next, textbooks and other teaching materials will be addressed. This will be followed by a section on children’s books and songs. Finally, a summary of this chapter will be provided.
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Notes
- 1.
The labels of the Likert scale points 4 and 5 may seem a little unusual, as one would probably expect unimportant followed by very unimportant. When developing the questionnaire, my research assistants and I discussed individual labels and decided that instead of two very distinctly negative items, such as the aforementioned ones, it would be preferable to include an option that is more negative but not completely so, in order to give teachers the opportunity to express this softer negative option rather than the two harsher ones. Our rationale was that it was perhaps more unlikely that teachers would consider any of the staples of EFL to be very unimportant and thus to include the sequence unimportant – very unimportant could (a) force teachers to tick the neither nor option even though they felt more negative and (b) probably leave us with two scales that would hardly ever be used. That the second concern was warranted is shown by the fact only one teacher ticked the unimportant option once. The inclusion of the less important option is warranted by the fact that this option was selected by several teachers. See also Likert scale labels used in Page et al. (2006) that were designed to provide the best fit for their questions and instrument.
- 2.
In the German original version, the word used was Begrüßung (literal translation: greeting). However, I felt that it could be ambiguous to translate this into greeting phase in English as one of the speech act categories in this book is called the same. I therefore used the term opening phase.
- 3.
Decoo (2010, p. 120) helpfully summarizes the slightly different conceptualizations of word families as follows: “[A] word family consists of a base word and all its derived and inflected forms that can be understood by a learner without having to learn each form separately” (Bauer and Nation 1993, p. 253). Laufer (2005) limits derivatives to ‘common’ ones: ‘A word family consists of a word, its inflections, and its common derivates’ (p. 325). A similar definition is given by Thornbury (2002, p. 4) and by Gardner (2007, p. 245), who speak of ‘transparent’ derivates.”
- 4.
The absence or presence of marks in school types and particular subjects has long been debated in Germany. Recently, some debates have started among teaching professionals about the impact of a no-marks policy on special needs pupils in inclusive classrooms in some German federal states. It will be interesting to see how this debate develops.
- 5.
According to the Common European Framework (Council of Europe 2001, p. 14) “the written and/or oral activities of mediation make communication possible between persons who are unable, for whatever reason, to communicate with each other directly. Translation or interpretation, a paraphrase, summary or record, provides for a third party a (re)formulation of a source text to which this third party does not have direct access. Mediating language activities – (re)processing an existing text – occupy an important place in the normal linguistic functioning of our societies. “
- 6.
See Schmid-Schönbein (2008) for a short history of writing and reading skills in German primary school curricula.
- 7.
- 8.
It needs to be noted here that these results reflect teachers’ recollections of their own activities. While actual observation of classroom activities would make it possible to obtain more precise information on what teachers were focusing on, I would not have been able to obtain actual video or audio recorded data from as many teachers. In addition, Labov’s observer’s paradox (c.f. Hassall 2006) could also have resulted in teachers changing their normal classroom habits and foci when being observed. This needs to be borne in mind when observational data is collected, analysed and presented. While a triangulation of various data collection methods can lead to interesting insights, the benefits and limitations of the different methods should always be addressed and discussed. The self-report approach that was taken here is similar to Cohen (2018) and Richards (1990).
- 9.
Teaching unit here refers to the last topic that the teachers covered, since just asking them about the last lesson could have resulted in responses that might have been very different from what typically happens in their classrooms. A teaching unit tends to encompass a number of lessons on a particular topic.
- 10.
Bialystok (1993, p. 43) writes “pragmatic competence entails a variety of abilities concerned with the use and interpretation of language in contexts. It includes speakers’ ability to use language for different purposes – to request, to instruct, to effect change. It includes listeners’ ability to get past the language and to understand the speaker’s real intentions, especially when these intentions are not directly conveyed in the forms – indirect requests, irony and sarcasm are some examples.” See also Chap. 2 for a detailed explanation of important concepts and issues in pragmatics.
- 11.
The teachers’ survey focused only on pragmatic routines that would be considered polite in typical, everyday contexts and circumstances. It needs to be pointed out, however, that in recent years a debate has taken place in interlanguage pragmatics about the teaching of impolite routines and expressions. The rationale for teaching impolite language tends to be that learners should be aware of what constitutes impolite language in order to be able to comprehend speaker’s or writer’s intentions and to take appropriate action (e.g. recognize an insult or a threat and take steps to ensure their personal safety). In addition, there is also the argument that L2 learners should be provided with verbal strategies to express a wide range of emotions in the target language, which then includes also negative emotions. Since this book concentrates on the needs of primary EFL learners, impolite language was not focused on in the teachers’ survey, as impolite strategies and expressions are not likely to be a central concern for young beginner-level learners. For a more detailed discussion on teaching (im)politeness see the edited volume by Pizziconi and Locher (2015) on teaching and learning (im)politeness. For an overview of the topic see Félix-Brasdefer and Mugford’s (2017) handbook chapter on the issue.
- 12.
These routines corresponded to the speech acts of greetings (4 instances), leave-takings (6 instances), expressions of gratitude (4 instances), responses to expression of gratitude (1 instance). In addition, the politeness markers please that is commonly associated with requests, and a routine here you are (cf. Sect. 2.1.5) were included. Here you are is typically used when handing over an item that the other person has requested (cf. its occurrence in the textbook data in Sect. 4.2.2). A detailed discussion of the speech acts can be found in the literature review (Chap. 2) and the methodology (Chap. 3). The speech acts are all included in the Thuringian curriculum for foreign language instruction in primary schools under the name language functions (Thüringer Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur 2010, pp. 14–17).
- 13.
See my discussion of this greeting in Sect. 4.3.1 for more details.
- 14.
Although his study had a broader focus and was completed by participants from many different countries, Cohen’s (2018) survey of native and non-native EFL teachers’ coverage of key pragmatic areas also indicates that teachers’ reports on how frequently they address specific speech acts in their classrooms suggested that there was variation regarding the coverage of specific speech acts in the participants’ classrooms.
- 15.
- 16.
Kirsch (2008, pp. 87–88) nicely illustrates how songs and rhymes can be used to teach typical greeting routines, which provide teachers with an easy way of bringing more speech act strategies into their EFL classrooms.
- 17.
Wilden (2018, p. 235) notes that “body movement and physical activity are significant for successful learning. Integrating different forms of physical activity in school education has a very long tradition which is usually related to concepts such as holistic and action-oriented learning (Ganzheitlichkeit and Handlungsorientierung; cf. e.g. Bach/Timm 2013b, 16; Mayer 2013, 76, chapter 6 in this volume)”.
- 18.
She also notes that “some definitions of SEN include students who are gifted and talented, who need extra provision because they have significantly greater ability than their peers”. In Germany, very talented individuals are often focused on in the distinct field of Begabtenförderung [programs for particularly gifted individuals], cf. Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (2015).
- 19.
This is not specified further.
- 20.
According to the report this combined area has been included since 2012.
- 21.
See the Nationaler Bildungsbericht by Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung (2018) for more detailed information on special needs education in all German federal states and numbers of SEN learners attending different types of educational institutions, and Stadler-Heer (2019) for different views on inclusion.
- 22.
Maynard suggests that images can be used in a variety of ways. She proposes, for example, that “pictures of instruction, which can be pointed to in order to clarify meaning” (2012, p. 96) can be helpful for learners with learning difficulties.
- 23.
This focus seemed to work well for them and so they performed much better than in other subjects where the focus was on reading and writing, i.e. skills with which they seemed to struggle.
- 24.
The present your family project in which learners are asked to bring along photos of their family members is a nice example for a project that could lead to interdisciplinary learning, if it were slightly extended. Learners could ask their parents or guardians for photos and information of their immediate family and also of their more extended one. This could lead to the learning of family relationship vocabulary (German), places that are important to the family (touching on geography, history, local knowledge and therefore the general studies subject that includes all of these issues) and maybe even mathematics (if a family tree is drawn and the various ancestors in each level are calculated).
- 25.
One teacher provided more than one comment in the other section. Thus, although it may look as if these comments had been made by five different teachers, a total of four teachers provided the other comments.
- 26.
For this, they had to choose the other option in the survey, which lead to a comment box becoming available for them to write the names of the textbooks series in.
- 27.
Although this part mainly focused on children’s literature and songs, a broader definition of realia that also included foreign money, postcards and souvenirs was provided.
- 28.
Of the 15 books on the list, 13 had been encountered by two MEd students that were involved in developing the survey in various phases of their training and two had been selected from a materials pool available to BA or MEd students in the summer term of 2017.
- 29.
In the German translation, Winnie the witch and Wilbur her cat have been given different names. To maintain the alliteration of the English original, the German characters are called Zilly, die Zauberin and her cat is called Zingaro.
- 30.
The book is called: Winnie in Winter edition for learners of English with activities and adapted text by Paul Shipton.
- 31.
The numbers in brackets correspond to the number of EFL teachers who mentioned the respective book in the questionnaire.
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Schauer, G.A. (2019). Results: EFL Primary School Teachers. In: Teaching and Learning English in the Primary School. English Language Education, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23257-3_6
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