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1
Overview: educational and political context
Dick Hudson
Cambridge, October 2009
2
Plan
1. The ideal education cycle
2. Why education needs linguistics
3. Why linguistics needs education
4. History: 1900-1960
5. History: 1960-1980
6. History: 1980-2009
7. Opportunities and challenges
3
1.The ideal education cycle
infant
adult researcher
school teacher
Year 1-13
university researchknow-ledge
know-ledge
4
2. Why education needs linguistics
• Descriptive content for:– L1 and literacy– FL– EAL
• Theoretical content for:– ideas to teach (language awareness)– language pedagogy
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3. Why linguistics needs education
• Students need good education
• Researchers need good education
• We need research in educational linguistics– Does education have any effect on language?– Does education affect grammaticality
judgements?
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4. History: 1900-1960
• HE: No research on language– except phonetics– No teaching of ‘language’
• except OE and philology
• Schools: Traditional grammar taught and tested– but not English grammar– ‘ [it is] impossible at the present juncture to teach
English grammar in the schools for the simple reason that no-one knows exactly what it is ’ (Board of Education 1921)
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GCE O-level English 1950
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5. History: 1960-1980
• GCE grammar test stops– Research shows grammar is useless?
• English teachers abandon grammar
• FL teachers follow suit– Research favours ‘communicative’ methods?
• But linguistics develops fast– particularly English grammar
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Committee for Linguistics in Education
• 1978 seminar: ‘Linguistics and the Teaching of Language in Schools’– created BAAL/LAGB Language Steering Committee
• 1980 this committee ran 2 seminars:– Linguistics as an examinable subject in schools
– The contribution of linguistics to the teaching of English as the mother tongue
• 1980 CLIE born– nearly 30 years ago, time to take stock
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6. History: 1980-2009
• The Tory backlash: the National Curriculum
• Favoured explicit Knowledge About Language (KAL)
• But English teachers had no training– So £25 million for LINC
• 1997: Labour took over
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Strategies
• 1999 The Literacy Strategy– current teaching was failing– required grammar at primary– extended since to secondary
• 2002 Languages … A strategy for England– current teaching of FL was failing– again required KAL, including grammar
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A-level English Language
• Linguistics for English teachers trained in literature– Born in early 1980s– A great success
• 2011: GCSE English language!
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But how much grammar do schools actually teach?
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NB Grammar KAL is worse.
0123456789
1986 1992 1994 2009
mean per person: PoS
mean per person:function
mean per person: all
errors per person FL students
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7. Opportunities and challenges
• Official policy requires KAL in schools– in English and FL
• Linguistics is viewed as important– but difficult and ‘dry’
• But most teachers lack subject knowledge– so most teachers don’t actually teach KAL
• What is to be done?