Cornerstones

The material package owes a great deal to both learner and learning centered methods. It is grounded on the assumption that learning foreign languages is more enjoyable, and more effective, if we focus on meaning and base teaching on contents rather than following structural, notional or functional syllabi. Nonetheless, I am not suggesting that learning a foreign language without ‘noticing’ language in itself would be enough. In the Finnish upper secondary school - where I visualize these materials would be used - students already have a working knowledge of English. The upper-intermediate or advanced level learner can well ‘do things with language’ – instead of paying explicit attention to it. They know ‘grammar’, have a vast vocabulary base and have practiced their reading, writing and listening skills extensively. Speaking skills tend to be more neglected. Rovasalo (2008, 28-31) reports on research conducted on the practicing of the oral skills in the Finnish upper secondary school, and concludes that even though the speaking skill is clearly recorded in the national curriculum, in practice it occupies a minor role, in spite of teachers and students alike considering oral work important and enjoyable (Huuskonen and Kähkönen 2006 in Rovasalo 2008, 30). In the dynamics included in the present material package, speaking and presentation skills have a major role, even though I consider that alternating the classic four language skills is more dynamic and enriching. On the other hand, what has traditionally been considered

‘teaching language in itself’ (grammar and vocabulary, idiomatic uses etc.), would in the present context ‘emerge’ during class room work and during the meaningmaking processes learners are immersed in. Constant error correction is not necessary; supporting learners with their language and scaffolding them is, as well as helping them ‘notice’ the language by drawing their attention to linguistic features when opportunities arise.

Learning-centered methods emphasize, above all, the role that social interaction has in the construction of language learning, principally through meaning focused tasks. In the present work, though, both ‘interaction’ and ‘meaning’ have connotations that are rarely contemplated. The semiotic theories - the anthropologically interpretive and the sociocultural standpoints - that lay in the heart of the theoretical framework for the package, understand interaction as symbolic activity that brings forth not only language

but also culturally constructed minds. Thus the package seeks to promote interaction in a broader sense: not only as the face-to-face verbal interaction (‘classroom talk’), but interactions with the environments that surround the learners (including objects and materials), or interaction with the ‘voices of others we are full of’, as Bakhtin (in Kramsch 2000b, 337) says, through visualizing, reflecting, writing and other forms of artistic and bodily expression. Furthermore, rituals, myth and art offer cultural texts that link us with the accumulated human experience. Interaction is not only verbal or linguistic communication: it is multimodal, and gestural, expression. I believe that by broadening the scope of meanings, the focus also enhances the learning of vocabulary, linguistic structures, expressions, and offers opportunities for useful practice and for continued learning. Also, it builds the learner’s confidence in the skills that are developing, and most importantly, brings pleasure.

Humanistic approaches have been central to the conception of the package. They share the ideal of promoting holistic personal growth in the learners. One of the tenets of humanistic teaching as well as of Steiner education is that particularly artistic involvement makes learning more meaningful and memorable. Thus, in the material, the process of generating something new is important, as is sharing what results from it.

Methods like the Silent Way and Suggestopedia have emphasized the importance of promoting a relaxing and pressure-free atmosphere to encourage learning. In the material package, teachers are suggested to open the lessons with short relaxation exercises and to use calm music on the background to keep the students close to the creative alpha-state while they listen, draw and write. On other occasions, music is used to arouse or to create images. Williams and Burden (1997, 202) remind that language classrooms in particular need to be places where learners are encouraged to use the new language, to try out new ways of expressing meanings, to negotiate, to make mistakes without fear, and to learn to learn from both successes and failures. A suitable environment for language learning enhances trust, confidence and self-esteem. Still, the authors (ibid.) warn about making sweeping statements, even from the emotional point of view, about suitable contexts for learning: each individual will construct his or her own sense of environment. I would assume, though, that everyone would appreciate positive and safe classroom climates and find them more conducive to learning than, for example, learning cultures that promote sheer pressure or competition.

The material strives to foster an ecological culture. It seeks to be context-sensitive and adapted to the demands of varying local environments. From the ecological perspective, any method that works is valuable. That would bring on stage – as Kramsch (2009b, 238-239) remarks - the ones CLT has tended to censure: memorization, dictation, translation, use of L1, poems, literature, repetition together with multiple interpretations and modes of meaning making (visual, verbal, gestural, musical) and modalities of expression (spoken, written, drawn, electronic). It depends on teachers, learners, institutional environments and general cultural climates what feels right and is found beneficial for learning. It is a Dogme – principle (Meddings & Thornbury, 2009) that the emphasis on the “here-and-now” would focus the teacher on actual learners and free him or her from following methodological or ideological prescriptions. Lantolf (2000a, 25), as well, has exhorted teaching to become more flexible and more transformative: instead of sticking to rigidly constructed lessons and prescribed outcomes it should favour more improvisation. The same has been proposed by different humanistic approaches and by post-method thinking. Kramsch (2009a) talks about the transformative quality of multilingual minds. With an open mind and sensitivity the language teacher can benefit the FL class from the cultural packages and multilingual potentials of individual learners.

In the material package, I have sought to apply the anthropological principle that engaging with the ‘distant’ or the ‘different’ sensitizes to the meanings of one’s own language and culture, or to language and culture in general. “The experience of the foreign always implies a reconsideration of the familiar” (Kramsch 2009a, 5). In general, there seems to be a need to move on toward more open-ended language teaching methodologies, on one hand, and to be more sensitive towards local cultural and social contexts together with the other languages that form part of the linguistic and cultural resources of the learners.

As seen in Chapter 2, language and culture teaching has usually gone hand in hand with the assumption that the culturally authentic texts for foreign language learning should originate from native language-and-culture contexts. This material package promotes learners’ generating their own texts and building their own ‘authentic’ materials. In other cases, the teacher (who as well is an authentic example of a multilingual subject) will provide or create texts for them. I think that it is a central sociolinguistic contribution (see e.g. Cook 2002a about the L2 user perspective) to FLT that language generated by learners and teachers (most probably L2 users as well) should be more valued.

Sociolinguistic perspectives give L1 its place, too. It is a valid tool when clearing doubts, highlighting differences between languages, and I think, during some stages while doing teamwork as well. FLT should promote learners’ awareness of all the linguistic and cultural resources they have at hand. Moreover, when culture is conceived in a broader sense, it includes any cultural contexts or ‘imagined communities’ that the learners and the teacher wish to bring to the English language class.

Finally, the material package promotes a view of meaning making to be essentially an aesthetic activity because it links body to mind, and form to meaning. The activities should all allow space for the bodily aspects of learning and for alternative and multimodal ways of representing subjective meanings. Also, it is important to find aesthetic pleasure in the language itself: in a poem, in an idea or emotion well expressed, in metaphors, in the oral traditions or, perhaps, in a single word thoroughly experienced and explored.