breaking rules

EA JOURNAL VOLUME 21 NO 28 EA JOURNAL VOLUME 21 NO 2 9

Breaking Rules

ALAN MALEY

Visiting Professor, Assumption University, Bangkok

Our learners are all different, yet all too often we teach them as if they were the same. I shall argue that introducing diversity in the areas of content, roles and procedures brings benefits to both teachers and students. Diversification can however be perceived as a threat, as a challenge or as an opportunity. I shall examine each of these views with practical illustrations of ways in which we can keep our practice alive and vital. I conclude by setting the question of diversity in the context of ‘graded objectives’, arguing that we need to extend our view of outcomes to include wider educational and psycho~social considerations.

Introduction‘A rut is like a grave, only longer’ – so goes the old adage. As teachers, we tend to adopt routines which, while necessary in terms of time-saving and convenience, have the potential for becoming rut-like. As John Fanselow observes in his undeservedly little-known book ‘Breaking Rules’, ‘we tend to operate within a rather narrow range most of the time. The rules of the classroom game are remarkably stable.’ (Fanselow 1987:9)

In this paper I shall argue that our teaching can benefit from a greater measure of diversity. It is, of course, a truism that all learners are different: they start at different levels, progress at different rates, use different learning styles, are variously motivated, have different previous educational experiences, and so on. (We sometimes forget that teachers are similarly various!)

It is also fair to say that we, as teachers, have become far more aware of this diversity following the work on Multiple Intelligences (Gardner,1985), Learning Styles and Strategies ( Willing1993, O’Malley and Chamot 1990, Oxford 1990, Wenden 1991), sensory dominance (visual, audio, kinaesthetic) and the now contentious ideas of Right-Left Brain dominance.

Yet, despite this rich array of human diversity, Fanselow’s observation remains all too often true: we do operate within a rather narrow range, and the rules (overt or covert) are remarkably stable.


Published materials show a similarly depressing tendency to uniformity. (Islam 2003, Maley 2003a, Wajnryb 1996), though in this paper they are not the primary focus of attention.

Potential dividends from diversityMy contention is that adopting a more diversified approach can bring demonstrable benefits to both teachers and learners.

For teachers, diversity has the potential to:

• Help them structure time more interestingly and thus to relieve the monotony of repetitive routines. This is particularly important for teachers whose career may span many years. The cumulative effect of ‘sameness’ can have a highly destructive effect on teacher motivation, with undesirable consequences for learners. No one likes to be taught by a teacher who is either ‘burnt out’ or ‘switched off.’

• Sharpen their powers of observation and awareness of their students. When we change our customary practice, we become more aware of the effects of what we do.

• Enable them to discover things about themselves, their students and the process, which would otherwise remain unnoticed. ‘…each rule we break provides us with another alternative rule that is self~generated and tests the validity of our preconceived notions.’ (Fanselow 1987: 6) If they never try anything different, however small, they never find out how it might have changed things.

• Make them more self~reliant; to depend less on ‘expert’ opinion. There is a natural, though misguided, belief among many teachers that someone else, usually an external expert, is better equipped to advise them on best practice than they are themselves, with intuitions based on their own daily experience with a specific group of students in a specific setting. Trying out a more diverse approach tends to strengthen the sense of self-reliance so necessary for professional growth.

• Demonstrate that no one set of routinised procedures will ever work all the time, in all circumstances. There is no ‘best method’ (Prabhu 1990). Rather, there are ‘horses for courses’ – we need to be able to call upon a diverse range of responses to different classes in different places, at different times.

For students, diversity can:

• Help to equalise opportunity. With varied activities, the chances increase for everyone to shine at least some of the time. All too often, we privilege ‘Left-brain’, cognitively-inclined, convergent learners, at the expense of others, whose learning preferences are quite different.


• Raise motivation by creating a climate of surprise and expectancy, rather than routine expectations. By creating a state of ‘expectancy’ (What will happen this time?) rather than of ‘expectation’ (Oh, not that again!), we sustain the essential forward momentum of motivation.

• Help to sustain attention span. Those who are more interested, are generally more alert and aware.

• Offer the possibility of learning through more than one sensory channel. Even for learners with a pronounced learning-modality preference, presenting information through a variety of sensory inputs can reinforce learning.

• An important educational lesson can be conveyed to learners when they see that the teacher too is learning, that knowledge is not a quantum of information fixed for all time, that the essence of learning is experience. ‘Diversified’ teachers demonstrate this through their daily practice.

Some dimensions of diversityBefore outlining the possible reactions to diversity, it will be useful to lay out the areas within which variation is possible. We can, for example, vary:

• Fundamental approaches: from highly communicative to ‘traditional’, thus admitting the value of unfashionable approaches. There is a tendency to dismiss out of hand practices which do not fit the current paradigms. Diversification can sometimes bring unexpected results!

• Content, in terms of the range of topics/text~types offered. These are frequently very narrow.

• Level in relation to texts, task complexity, cognitive/affective demand, etc.

• Methodology, including activity types, techniques, mode of presentation, etc.

• Logistics, such as classroom layout, duration, intensity and frequency of activities, modes of working (whole class, groups, indpendent learning,etc.)

• Technology: from pencil and paper to the Internet.

• Teaching style, including cooperative/coercive, etc, creation of atmosphere, use of voice, etc.

• Learning style: visual/auditory/kinaesthetic, independant/dependant, etc.

• Evaluation processes.

• Expected outcomes; aims or objectives? Material, Pedagogical, Educational, Psycho~social (Maley. 2003). I return to this issue in the final section of this article.


Three reactions to diversityI shall describe three possible reactions to diversity, both institutionally, by Ministries and schools, and individually, by teachers. By some, it is regarded as a threat, which needs to be controlled or even suppressed; by others as a problematic challenge, to be coped with or channelled. Yet others regard it as an opportunity to be eagerly exploited.

In analysing these three perceptions, I shall see how they apply to three major aspects of the teaching process: CONTENT (what is selected to be taught), ROLE (who is in charge and how they exercise power), and PROCEDURES (how it is done in class).

Diversity as ThreatCONTENT

Content can be controlled by:

• Inflexible curricular frameworks put in place by the authorities, without the participation or concurrence of those who will have to implement them. This attempts to ensure that nothing will be taught which has not been prescribed.

• Setting up examinations which reflect the syllabus requirements and nothing else. Any teaching which does not lead to success in the examination is thereby considered irrelevant.

• Prescribing textbooks which serve the same conformist agenda as the syllabus, and which sub-serve the examination. Textbooks can, and often do, preempt most of the decisions in the domain of content, order of presentation, and method, which might otherwise be taken by the teacher or the teacher and the students together.

ROLES:

• In the classroom, it is the teacher who occupies the leading role, and who organises and directs all activities. Students do as they are told.

• The system as a whole is characterised by a hierarchical structure which ensures that everyone in it ‘knows their place’. This helps ensure that no one engages in non-conformist, unsanctioned activities which might put the hierarchy at risk.

PROCEDURES:These are commonly ritualised in a number of ways to minimise the likelihood of divergent activities.

• ‘ritualisation may take one or more ostensible forms, such as dress regulations,


standing up to show respect, the use of honorifics,…, not speaking unless spoken to, procedures for assignment and submission of work, procedures for punishment and reward, opening and closing moves for the lesson…, shared notions about the different phases of the lesson…, legitimate and deviant behaviour…’(Prabhu 1994: 8).

• Teaching techniques are likewise ritualised by using a restricted set of procedures: dictation, reading aloud round the class, choral repetition, T~S question and answer, spelling and vocabulary tests based on memorisation, etc.

• Teachers are required to prepare elaborate (and impracticable) lesson plans, which bear little relationship to the complex reality of the unfolding lesson event. Failure to produce such fictional materials can result in sanctions against the teacher: a further way of controlling diversity.

Diversity as ChallengeIn this conceptualisation, there is broad consensus that diversity is inevitable, even if a little uncomfortable. It therefore becomes worthwhile to make efforts, however small, to harness it productively. How is this reflected in the three areas of Content, Roles and Procedure?

CONTENT

Teachers, either alone or in collaboration with their students, can introduce diversity in the following ways:

• Choosing their own topics. Many of the topics prescribed by syllabi and exemplified in coursebooks are astoundingly anodyne, and drawn from a very narrow range. (For details see Maley 2003b.)

• Choosing a wider range of text~types and genres (Maley1993).

• Varying focus between accuracy and fluency activities.

• Varying between cognitively and affectively~focussed activities.

• Varying difficulty level ~ both of texts and of tasks.

• Varying the medium of inputs (spoken/written, visual/verbal, etc.)

ROLES:

• Varying the direction of classroom interactions (T~S, S~S, S~T)

• Varying the mode of interaction (whole class, individual, groups, etc.)

• Varying the degree of teacher control.

• Varying the teacher’s role in a conscious way: (T as director, as coordinator/co-participant, as non-intrusive observer, as knowledge resource, etc.)


PROCEDURE:All the following parameters can be varied and alternated;

• Different seating and classroom layouts for different activities.

• Duration of activities: long and short.

• Pace of activities.

• Intensity of concentration demanded.

• Quantity of inputs (and outputs).

• Task~types (Maley 1993)

• Question types (Maley 2003 p:27, Nunan 1990).

• Receptive with productive activities.

• Sound with silence.

Diversity as Opportunity.Those who decide that diversity is not simply a burden patiently to be borne, but a constantly self-renewing source of opportunity can find support from a number of sources.

• Work in creativity theory and practice, including the teaching of ‘thinking’ (de Bono 1969, Buzan 2000).

• The already-mentioned, little~known, but hugely influential ‘Breaking Rules’ (Fanselow 1987), which advocates ‘doing the opposite’ as a heuristic for finding new ways of doing old things. This has been more recently followed up by his Contrasting Conversations (Fanselow 1992).

• The trend towards the re-exploration of traditional practices such as dictation (Davis and Rinvolucri 1988), literature (Duff and Maley 1990), Choral speaking (Maley 1999, 2000), and Story~telling (Morgan and Rinvolucri 1984, Taylor 2001, Wajnryb 2003, Wright 1993, 1995).

• The publication of resource materials which offer teachers the flexibility to adapt and supplement the course materials they are required to work with.

It is also interesting to note how many of the innovative methodologies of recent years have been based on the reversal of accepted, orthodox procedures:

• The Silent Way significantly reduces teacher talk.

• In CLL the teacher only provides input when students request it.

• Suggestopoedia requires students not to make a conscious effort, presents them with enormously long texts, takes liberties with ‘normal’ intonation, offers a comfortable environment, etc.

• In Psycho-drama (Dufeu 1994) students speak ‘for’ someone else by tuning in to their body rhythm.


• TPR does not require students to produce language initially.

• NLP helps the teacher to tune in to students’ dominant ‘modalities’.

What seems to characterise teachers who embrace diversity as an opportunity is the willingness to question everything they do, and to ask the question, ‘what if…?’ In what follows, I am able only to suggest some possible angles on diversity.

CONTENT;

• Using learning resources as well as textbooks. This restores the power of the teacher over content and order of presentation.

• Moving from a pre-determined, externally-imposed syllabus to a progression negotiated between teachers and learners (Nunan 1988).

• Developing text-based materials, or what McGrath terms ‘concept-driven material’ (McGrath 2002).

• Allowing students to decide which topics to work on.

• Encouraging students to make their own reference and learning materials.

ROLES:

• Switch roles. For example, students, not teachers, ask all the questions, evaluate answers, set the exercises, teach some items. (There can be few better ways of learning something than being required to teach it!)

• Switch persons. For example, teachers teach each other’s classes. Teachers from other subject areas teach English. Non-teachers from outside school are brought in. Some activities take place in teacherless classes.

PROCEDURE;This is the area allowing for greatest diversification, so the suggestions can only be indicative, not exhaustive.

• Teaching is moved out of the classroom, as in project work (Fried Booth 2002), self~access (Sheerin 1991), Internet activities (Scott-Windeatt et al. 2000), homework (Painter 2003).

• Questioning procedures are radically explored. For example, students ask another question instead of answering, answer a different question from the one asked, ask for clarification before replying, devise questions interrogation~style, etc.

• Testing is varied. For example, students write their own tests, mark each other’s tests, grade their own work, grade in small student committees, have ‘open book’ tests, have unlimited time to complete tests. Tests are substituted by continuous


assessment, such as portfolio assessment. Criteria for marking are varied for different tasks: appearance/layout, accuracy, appropriacy to purpose, etc.

• Vary the way repetition is done. For example, vary speed, volume, emotion.

• Vary physical aspects of an activity. For example, use masks, use puppets, use mime, change physical position ~ standing, sitting, lying (Maley and Duff 1982, 2004).

• Vary correction procedures.

Varying OutcomesIn a recent publication I suggested that materials design can be organised under three headings: Inputs (the raw material we draw upon), Process (what we do with Input), and Outcomes (Maley 2003 b). The focus in this article has so far been on content and process diversification. I shall conclude with some remarks on Outcomes.

Outcomes

Material outcomes.(student texts, visual displays, performance etc.)

Pedagogical outcomes.(evidence of learning, test results, fluency, learning to learn, handling

feedback,meta~compet-ence,etc.)

Educational outcomes.(increased social awareness, critical thinking, creative problem solving,

independence, etc.)

Psycho~social outcomes.(increased self~esteem, self~awareness, confidence, cooperation,

group solidarity, responsibility, attitudinal change,etc.)

As can be seen from the above chart, material outcomes focus on the physical products of learning, such as student journals, visual displays, etc. Pedagogical outcomes focus on evidence of learning, such as test results. These are both ‘Objectives’ focussed, using Widdowson’s distinction between objectives and aims (Widdowson 1983). Learning is commonly evaluated primarily in terms of such ‘objectives’.

However, there are also more general aims, expressed in terms of educational outcomes (developing critical thinking, cultural awareness, etc.) and psycho~social outcomes


(developing self~esteem, confidence, responsibility for self and others, etc.), which tend to be overlooked (Maley 2003 b).

I see the focus on objectives at the expense of aims as a powerful and damaging trend in language teaching (and indeed of all ‘education’) worldwide. Educational authorities increasingly opt for what are sometimes called graded objectives, or standards-setting, or competency-based learning (Richards and Rodgers 2001:141~149). Typically, these specify in detail the desired target behaviours, then divide them into their constituent components, which are then taught, and tested. If a learner does not meet the requirements of the test, she is re-taught and re-tested until she does. What is wrong with this?

• It adopts an ‘engineering’ approach to learning. The contention is that, if all the parts are properly tooled, it will fit together and function. It is however, widely agreed that learning does not work like this, and that an organic, ‘horticultural’ metaphor is more appropriate.

• It assumes that an atomistic reduction of the key elements in the teaching stage will lead to an ability to recombine them at the using stage. But the whole is necessarily more than its component parts, particularly in complex systems such as language. ‘We murder to dissect’.

• It is typical of what Freire has called a ‘banking’ concept of education. Students work to earn credits of knowledge/skills, which they put in their knowledge bank, and cash in at the test or examination.

• It assumes that it is possible to predict (in the case of foreign language learning) which items of language it will be useful for learners to acquire. Most syllabus and materials designers are well aware that this is virtually impossible to determine.

• Even if it were, the assumption is that teacher/materials input equals learner intake: that what is taught is what is learnt. Yet SLA research over the last twenty years conclusively shows that this is not the case.

• It assumes that students will all progress at roughly the same rate, hence a ‘lockstep’ approach to teaching.

• It is top-down: one group of people decides what is right or good for another, usually weaker, group. The focus is on ‘delivery systems’ rather than on integrating learning.

• It is, above all administratively convenient. This is hardly surprising in an age of cost-benefit analysis, efficiency, speed, and accountability. It is convenient for educational authorities to opt for an approach which offers instant measures of progress, and which has the appearance of rigour and discipline. It is this which


helps to explain the overwhelming importance of objectives in course materials and the relative neglect of aims.

However, the fact that such an approach to education is fashionable and corresponds so closely to the spirit of the age of global capitalism (profit first, people last) does not make it educationally sound. Those involved in teaching and in materials design could greatly extend and diversify the range of what is offered to students with relatively little effort.

Will they make that effort?

R E F E R E N C E S

Buzan, Tony. (2000) Head First. London:Thorsons / Harper Collins

Davis, Paul and Rinvolucri, Mario. (1988) Dictation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

De Bono, Edward. (1969) A Five Day Course in Thinking. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Dufeu, Bernard. (1994) Teaching Myself. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Duff, Alan and Maley, Alan.(1990) Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fanselow, John. (1987) Breaking Rules. New York: Longman.

Fanselow, John. (1992) Contrasting Conversations: activities for exploring our beliefs and teaching practices. New York. Longman

Fried-Booth, Diana. (2002) Project Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gardner, Howard. (1985) Frames of Mind. London: Paladin Books.

Islam, Carlos. (2003) Materials for Beginners, in Tomlinson, Brian (ed). Issues in Materials Development. New York and London: Continuum International Publishing Group.

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Maley, Alan. (1999) Choral Speaking. English Teaching Professional, Issue 12, July 1999.

Maley, Alan. (2000) The Language Teacher’s Voice. Oxford: Macmillan Heinemann.


Maley, Alan. (2003 a). Creative Approaches to Writing Materials. Chapter 11 in Brian Tomlinson (ed.) Developing Materials for Language Teaching. London and New York: Continuum.

Maley, Alan.( 2003b) Inputs, Processes and Outcomes in Materials Development: extending the range In Mukundan, Jayakaran (ed), (2004) Readings on ELT Materials. Kuala Lumpur: UPM Press.

Maley, Alan and Duff, Alan. (1982 / 2004) (3rd edition, forthcoming) Drama Techniques in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Morgan, John and Rinvolucri, Mario. (1984) Once Upon a Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nunan, David. (1988) Syllabus Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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O’Malley, J.M. and Chamot, A.U. (1990) Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Painter, Lesley. ( 2003) Homework. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Prabhu, N.S. (1990). There is no best method: Why? TESOL Quarterly. 24 (2)

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Alan Maley has lived and worked in China, India, Singapore and Thailand as well as the UK. He has over thirty books to his credit and is the editor for the Oxford Resource Book for Teachers series. He was a keynote speaker at the 2003 English Australia conference.

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breaking rules