Transcript Linguistics for education - UCL Division of Psychology and

Linguistics for education
Dick Hudson
Cambridge December 2010
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Plan
1.
2.
3.
4.
The history of useful linguistics
Why education needs linguistics
How universities help or hinder schools
How to build new bridges
1. Through politicians
2. Through teachers
3. Directly
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1. Is linguistics useful?
• "You're a human being, and your time as a
human being should be socially useful. It
doesn't mean that your choices about
helping other people have to be within the
context of your professional training as a
linguist. Maybe that training just doesn't
help you to be useful to other people. In
fact, it doesn't."
– Noam Chomsky, 1991
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Curiosity-driven linguistics …
• has a long history
– in philosophy and logic
– in psychology
– in anthropology.
• Historical linguistics was driven by
curiosity.
• And so are most of us.
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But …
• linguistics can be useful as well!
• Applied linguistics applies linguistics
– to "the advancement of education by fostering
and promoting … the study of language use,
language acquisition and language teaching"
(BAAL constitution)
• 'Linguistics' (the analysis of language
structure) has been useful since work in …
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… Iraq about 2,000
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BC
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Babylonia
Akkadian
Babylon
Sumerian
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Becoming literate in Babylon
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Verb conjugations
(Sumerian and Akkadian)
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First – second – third person, in that order!!
We – you – they
Sumerian
Akkadian
English
menden-eše
ni:nu-mi
we
menzen-eše
attunu-mi
you
emene-eše
šunu-mi
they
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The Babylonian model
• Education teaches about L2 (Sumerian)
• Education also teaches about L1 (Akkadian)
• Linguistics provides a systematic and
explicit analysis of language structure.
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And in the next 4,000 years?
• Most of the time, at least some linguists
worked for education:
– writing pedagogical grammars and
dictionaries
• of dead languages (Greek, Latin)
• of living languages (English, Icelandic)
• So linguistics was mostly useful.
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2. What education needs from
linguists
• ideas, e.g. prescriptivism
– simple but controversial
– teachers need to believe
• models, e.g. the syntax/semantics
distinction
– abstract – teachers need to understand
• descriptions, e.g. English phonemes
– very rich and complex – teachers need to learn
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Some ideas
• Variation
– Language varies with speaker and context
• e.g. we weren't ~ we wasn't ~ we were not
• Descriptivism
– Variation need not be right/wrong
• we wasn't (correct non-standard) BUT we not was (wrong)
• Form/function
– Form and function have a complex relation
• e.g. in dog biscuit, dog is not an adjective!
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Some models
• Sounds and letters are different!
– How many sounds in through?
• Words and meanings are different!
– How many legs does the word DOG have?
• Tokens and types are different.
– How many words in The cat sat on the mat?
• Oh for some good notations in school!!!!!
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Some descriptions
• Any bits of
–
–
–
–
inflectional morphology
syntax
the phoneme system
lexical relations
• using standard metalanguage
• using standard notations.
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3. How universities help or hinder
schools
• In an ideal world,
– schools and universities are part of an
integrated educational system
– linguistics supports language education
• In the real world of the UK,
– linguistics doesn't support language education.
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The ideal education cycle
school
teacher
adult
researcher
university
knowledge
research
knowledge
Year 1-13
infant
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For example, …
• Modern linguists distinguish determiners
from adjectives.
• So universities should teach future L1 and
L2 teachers about determiners.
• Then the next generation will learn about
determiners in school …
• … as they do in France.
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On sale in any post office or service
station
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Contrast: A UK student with French
and Spanish at A-level
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The death of foreign languages?
A-level entries 1938-2010
35000
30000
25000
20000
French
German
Spanish
15000
10000
5000
0
ye
ar
89
91
93
95
97
99
1
3
5
7
9
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Why? UK universities
Language education (excluding linguistics)
• ignores language
– 'English', 'French' etc mean 'E/F literature'
• ignores linguistics
– Most English/'Language' departments have very
few teachers who research language
• produces no linguistics researchers
– Research on French etc linguistics hardly exists
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4. How to help schools
1. Through policy managers
–
and official policy statements
2. Through teachers
–
and teacher training
3. Directly
–
through university activity in schools
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4.1 Official policy makers
• Politicians are hard to persuade.
• But educational managers listen to:
– good arguments.
– fair criticisms on technicalities
• especially when combined with solutions.
• But they depend on:
– politicians for approval
– teachers for implementation.
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The National Curriculum
• 1991: Margaret Thatcher
• How should English be taught?
– several committees met and reported
– linguistics was well represented and influential
• The NC requires grammar teaching
– but English teachers know very little grammar
– and grammar is never tested
– so the NC has had very little effect on grammar
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4.2 Teachers
• Michael Halliday's UCL project 1964-70
–
–
–
–
massive Government support
employed 3 linguists and 9 teachers for 6 years!
trained 60 English teachers for a year
reached many more
• Strong on variation
– weak on grammar
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A-level English Language
• One of Halliday's achievements
– Study of variation in English for 17/18-year olds
entries
20000
15000
10000
entries
5000
0
1985
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
2000 O1
O2
O3
O4
O5
O6
O7
O8
O9
10
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4.3 Direct action
• The UK Linguistics Olympiad
– run by university linguists
– selects a team for the International Olympiad
• First year in 2010:
– 600 children
– age 12-18
– very popular
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Some advice
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Get to know your education system.
Concentrate on basic linguistics.
Help to achieve existing goals.
Work through committees.
Be prepared to compromise.
Use evidence, just as in research.
Be patient – change takes a generation.
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