SOTE - The Teaching of Speaking and Literature

daptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
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National Teachers College
MODULE 1
The Teaching of Speaking and Literature

YOUR GOALS

This module will provide you foundational knowledge on language, speaking
and literature. This foundational knowledge will help you understand the wider scope
of teaching speaking and literature. At the end of this learning module, you are
expected to demonstrate the following competencies:

1. analyze the principles and distinctiveness of second language acquisition;
2. explain the characteristics and relevance of speaking; and
3. evaluate the importance of literature.

YOUR PROJECT

After accomplishing the experiences and reading resources included in this
module, you will come up with an feature article based on given themes. Please take
note of the writing conditions and expectations that follow.

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 1

School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2020-2021
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THE THEMES

Theme 1: The strong connection among language acquisition, speaking and
literature

Theme 2: The foreseen challenges in teaching speaking and literature

Theme 3: Making speaking and literature relevant to the 21st century learners

Theme 4: Skills and qualities of a 21st teacher who is teaching speaking and literature

Theme 5: The central dogma of language teaching in the aspect of speaking and
literature

SPECIFIC WRITING CONDITIONS:

1. Imagine that you are a writer who produces published articles in the feature section
of a newspaper or in an academic magazine or journal. This shall be the
perspective that you need to take in writing your feature article.

2. You are allowed to write one/two/three article/s of your chosen theme/s. One
theme is equivalent to one article.

3. You have to bear in mind the writing structure and conventions of a feature article.

4. You are allowed to make use of pictures and graphic illustrations that are related to
your article to further support the thoughts that are included in it, but you may also
choose not to.

5. Limit your article to two to three pages. There is no limit in the number of words.

6. If you are going to render the article electronically, you should be following this
prescribed format:

1. Font style: Century Gothic
2. Font size: 12
3. Line and paragraph spacing: 1.0 (Single)
4. Margins (Top, Bottom, Left, Right): 1”
5. Paper size: Letter size
6. Orientation: Portrait

7. Handwritten outputs should be rendered in print, not in script.


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YOUR EXPERIENCE
Be guided by the following schedule that you can follow in order to
manage your learning experience well:

WEEK TASK OUTPUT
1 1 An infographic of the second language acquisition
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3 2 A written speech that discusses the characteristics and relevance
of speaking
4 3 A free verse poem that explains the importance of literature
5 4
Feature article (Prelim)
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There are three required reading resources for this module. You are allowed to
look for other related resources if you have the means to do so. Note that our school
library has online resources that you can access.

TASK 1: Read the work of Dr. Md. Enamul Hoque entitled An Introduction to the Second
Language Acquisition (Reading Material 1). T his material shall provide you basic
principles of second language acquisition which is integral in understanding the
principles of speaking and literature teaching. After reading the material, you will
come up with an infographic that provides a simple discussion of the salient points of
second language acquisition: Be guided by the following:

1. Capture the salient inputs that you need to include in your infographic from the
reading material provided to you. The emphasis of your infographic is to share
information about the principles and distinctiveness of second language
acquisition.
2. Do not be too verbose with your infographic. Be concise, simple, and direct to
the point. Remember that your infographic serves as a summary of the entire
content of the reading material. Again, just include the most important
information.
3. Do not make use of too much graphics and designs because that might not
serve the original intention of your work. Remember, the main purpose of your
infographic is to give a summary of the most important inputs about early
second language acquisition.
4. Use English as your medium in communicating your thoughts.
5. For purposes of readability, electronic outputs should be encoded using any
non-cursive fonts. Font size will be dependent on your choice, but you have to
make sure that the content is clear and readable.


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6. You may use any software to make your infographic.
7. In case that your output is handwritten or drawn, it should be rendered in print,
not in script. Be artistic. Make use of coloring and other art materials.

READING MATERIAL NO. 1
Lifted from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335690866_An_Introduction_to_the_Second_Language_Acquisition

An Introduction to the Second Language Acquisition
Dr. Md. Enamul Hoque
Director, EDRC Bamgladesh
1. Introduction
Language is the method of expressing ideas and emotions in the form of signs and symbols. These signs and
symbols are used to encode and decode the information. There are many languages spoken in the world. The first
language learned by a baby is his or her mother tongue. It is the language, which he or she listens to from his or
her birth. Any other language learned or acquired is known as the second language. Second language acquisition,
or SLA, has two meanings. In a general sense it is a term to describe learning a second language. More
specifically, it is the name of the theory of the process by which we acquire - or pick up - a second language. This
is mainly a subconscious process which happens while we focus on communication. It can be compared with
second language learning, which describes how formal language education helps us learn language through more
conscious processes. Implications for the language classroom include the ideas that the teacher can create contexts
for communication which facilitate acquisition, that there is a natural order of acquisition of language, that there
are affective filters which inhibit acquisition, especially for adults, and that comprehensible input is very
important.
1.1. Second language acquisition

The definition of second language acquisition and learning is learning and acquisition of a second language once
the mother tongue or first language acquisition is established. It is the systematic study of how people learn a
language other than their mother tongue. Second language acquisition or SLA is the process of learning other
languages in addition to the native language. For instance, a child who speaks Hindi as the mother tongue starts
learning English when he starts going to school. English is learned by the process of second language acquisition.
In fact, a young child can learn a second language faster than an adult can learn the same language.
1.2. Second Language Learning

Language learning refers to the formal learning of a language in the classroom. On the other hand, language
acquisition means acquiring the language with little or no formal training or learning. If you go to a foreign land
where people speak a different language from your native language, you need to acquire that foreign language. It
can be done with little formal learning of the language through your every day interaction with the native peoples
in the market place, work place, parks or anywhere else. This is true for learning spoken language.
1.3. First language acquisition

It seems that children all over the world go through similar stages of language learning behaviors. They use
similar constructions in order to express similar meanings, and make the same kinds of errors. These stages can be
summarized as follows:
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SL Language stage Beginning stage

1 crying birth
2 cooing 6 weeks
3 babbling 6 months
4 one-word utterances 1 year
5 two-word utterances 18 months
6 questions, negatives 2 years 3 months
7 rare or complex constructions 5 years
8 mature speech 10 years
An important characteristic of child language is that it is rule-governed, even if initially the rules children create
do not correspond to adult ones. Children commonly produce forms such as sheeps or breads which they never
heard before and therefore not imitating.
2. Language Acquisition and Language Learning
Learners acquire language through a subconscious process during which they are unaware of grammatical rules.
This happens especially when they acquire their first language. They repeat what is said to them and get a feel for
what is and what is not correct. In order to acquire a language, they need a source of natural communication,
which is usually the mother, the father, or the caregiver.
Language learning, on the other hand, is the result of direct instruction in the rules of language. Language
learning is not an age-appropriate activity for very young children as learning presupposes that learners have a
conscious knowledge of the new language and can talk about that knowledge. They usually have a basic
knowledge of the grammar.
Acquisition:
unconscious process
does not presuppose teaching
the child controls the pace Learning:
intentional process
presupposes teaching
the teacher controls the pace
One needs to approach the comparison of first and second language acquisition by first considering the differences
between children and adults.
Four possible categories to compare, defined by age and type of acquisition are presented as follows:
Child Adult
L1 C1 A1
L2 C2 A2

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Cell A1 is of an abnormal situation. There have been few instances of an adult acquiring a first language. The
C1-A2 comparisons are difficult to make because of the enormous cognitive, affective, and physical differences
between children and adults. The C1-C2 hold age constant, while the C2-A2 hold second language constant.
3. Critical Period Hypothesis

The Critical Period Hypothesis is the ability to acquire language biologically linked to age. This hypothesis claims
that there is a period of growth, from early childhood to adolescence, in which full native competence is possible
when learning a language. The hypothesis was grounded in research which showed that people who lost their
linguistic capabilities, for example as a result of an accident, were able to regain them totally before puberty
(about the age of twelve) but were unable to do so afterwards. There is considerable evidence to support the claim
that L2 learners who begin learning as adults are unable to achieve native-speaker competence in either grammar
or pronunciation.
Derived from biology, this concept was presented by Penfield and Roberts in 1959 and refined by Lenneberg in
1967. Lenneberg contended that the LAD needed to take place between age two and puberty: a period he believed
to correspond with the lateralisation process of the brain. The lateralisation process of the brain is it a complex and
ongoing procedure that refers to the tendency for some cognitive processes to be more dominant in one
hemisphere than the other. According to Lenneberg this idea was concerned with the implicit “automatic
acquisition” in immersion contexts and does not stop the possibility of learning a foreign language after
adolescence, but with a lot more effort and typically less achievement. Lenneberg likewise expressed that the
development of language is a result of brain maturation: equipotential hemispheres at birth, language gradually
becoming lateralized in the left hemisphere.
4. Lateralization
There is evidence in neurological research that as the human brain matures, certain functions are assigned, or
‘lateralized’, to the left hemisphere of the brain, and certain other functions to the right hemisphere. Intellectual,
logical, and analytic functions appear to be largely located in the left hemisphere, while the right hemisphere
controls functions related to emotional and social needs. Lenneberg (1967) suggested that lateralization is a slow
process that begins around the age of two and is completed around puberty.
5. History of Second Language Theories and Approach

5.1. Behavioristic approach (1900s -1950s):
In the 1950s and 1960s, in the behaviorist view, language learning is seen as the formation of habits, based on the
notions of stimulus and response. The response people give to stimuli in their environment will be reinforced if
desired outcome is obtained. Through repeated reinforcement, a certain stimulus will elicit the same response time
and again, which will then become a habit. When learning a second language, we already have a set of
well-established responses in our mother tongue. The L2 learning process therefore involves replacing those
habits by a set of new ones. The complication is that the old L1 habits interfere with this process, either helping or
inhibiting it. If the structures in the L2 are similar to those of the L1, learning will take place easily. If, however,
structures are realized differently in the L1 and the L2, then learning will be difficult. From a teaching point of
view, the implications of this approach were twofold. First, language learning would take place by imitating and
repeating the same structures time after time (it was strongly believed that practice makes perfect). Second,
teachers need to focus their teaching on areas of L1 and L2 difference. Researchers also embarked on the task of
comparing pairs of languages in order to pinpoint areas of differences. This was termed Contrastive Analysis
(CA).

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Behaviorist leaning theory

Theories of habit formation were theories of learning in general. A habit was formed when a particular stimulus
became regularly linked with a particular response. These theories were applied to language learning. In L1
acquisition children were said to master their mother tongue by imitating utterances produced by adults and
having their efforts at using language either rewarded or corrected. It was also believed that SLA could proceed in
a similar way. Imitation and reinforcement were the means by which the learner identified the stimulus-response
association that constituted the habits of the L2. L2 learning was most successful when the task was broken into a
number of stimulus-response links, which could be systematically practiced and mastered one at a time.
Criticisms: The creativity of language- children do not learn and reproduce a large set of sentences, but they create
new sentences that they have never learned before. This is only possible because they internalize rules rather than
strings of words. (e.g. Mummy goed; it breaked.)
Why the L2 learner made errors:

Old habits get in the way of learning new habits. The notion of interference has a central place in behaviorist
account of SLA. Where the first and second language share a meaning but express it in different ways, an error is
likely to arise in the L2 because the learner will transfer the realization device form his first language into the
second. Transfer will be positive when the first and second language habits are the same. Thus differences
between the first and second language create learning difficulty which results in errors. By comparing the
learner’s native language with the target language, differences could be identified and used to predict areas of
potential error.
5.2. Krashen’s monitor model (the 1970s)

Krashen’s Monitor Model evolved in the late 1970s in a series of articles (Krashen 1977,
1978) and was elaborated and expanded in a number of books (Krashen 1981, 1982, 1985; Krashen and Terrell
1983). Krashen’s theory has achieved considerable popularity among second-language teachers in the United
States. On the other hand, the theory has been seriously criticized on various grounds by second-language
researchers and theorists.
The five central hypotheses which constitute Krashen’s theory are as follows:
1. The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis 2. The Monitor Hypothesis 3. The Natural
Order Hypothesis 4. The Input Hypothesis 5. The Affective Filter Hypothesis
The acquisition-Learning Hypothesis

Krashen claimed that adult learners have two means for internalizing the target language. The first is
“acquisition”, a subconscious and intuitive process of constructing the system of a language, not unlike the
process used by a child to “pick up” a language. The second means is a conscious “learning” process in which
learners attend to form, figure out rules, and are generally aware of their own process. According to Krashen, what
is consciously learned – through the presentation of rules and explanations of grammar – does not become the
basis of acquisition of the target language. Learning does not “turn into” acquisition. Our conscious learning
process and our subconscious acquisition process are mutually exclusive.
The Monitor Hypothesis

The “Monitor” is a “device” for “watchdogging” one’s output, for editing and making alterations or corrections as
they are consciously perceived. Acquisition “initiates” the speaker’s utterances and is responsible for fluency.
Thus the Monitor is thought to alter the output of the acquired system before or after the utterance is actually
written or spoken, but the utterance is initiated entirely by the acquired system. This hypothesis has important
implications for language teaching. Krashen argued that formal instruction in a language provides rule isolation
and feedback for the development of the Monitor, but that production is based on what is acquired through

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communication, with the Monitor altering production to improve accuracy toward target language norms.
Krashen’s position is that conscious knowledge of rules does not help acquisition, but only enables the learner to
“polish up” what has been acquired through communication. The focus of language teaching should not be
rule-learning but communication.
The Natural Order Hypothesis

The Natural Order Hypothesis states that we acquire the rules of language in a predictable order, some rules
tending to come early and others late (Krashen 1985). This “natural” order of acquisition is presumed to be the
result of the acquired system, operating free of conscious grammar, or the Monitor. The principal source of
evidence for the Natural Order Hypothesis comes from the so-called “morpheme’ studies” (Dulay and Burt 1974)
Krashen also maintained that there is a “natural” sequence for the development of the negative, the auxiliary
system, questions, and inflections in English. To conclude, Krashen’s argument for the Natural Order Hypothesis
is based largely on the morpheme studies, which have been criticized on various grounds and which, by focusing
on final form, tell us little about acquisitional sequences.
The Input Hypothesis

This hypothesis postulates that humans acquire language in only one way – by understanding messages, or by
receiving ‘comprehensible input’…We move form i, our current level, to i+1, the next level along the natural
order, by understanding input containing i+1 (Krashen 1985). An important part of the Input Hypothesis is
Krashen’s recommendation that speaking not be taught directly or very soon in the language classroom. Speech
will ‘emerge’ once the acquirer has built up enough comprehensible input (i+1). Comprehensible input is the
route to acquisition and information about grammar in the target language is automatically available when the
input is understood. Evidence: the silent period – during this period, learners are presumably building up their
competence in the target language by listening. Krashen argued that they are making use of the ‘comprehensible
input’ they receive. Once competence has been built up, speech emerges.
Criticism: there is no way of knowing what comprehensible input is. Also, learners make considerable use of
formulaic expressions during the process of acquisition. Formulaic constructions enable learners to express
communicative functions they have not yet mastered and may be far from mastering. The main function of the
second language class according to Krashen is to provide learners with good and grammatical comprehensible
input that unavailable to them on the outside, and to bring them to the point where they can obtain comprehensible
input on their own in the real world. Krashen argued that the best way to learn a second language is to approach
the language as children do when they are acquiring their first language.
The Natural Approach: communication competence, or functional ability in a language, arises from exposure to
the language in meaningful settings where the meanings expressed by the language are understood. Rules,
patterns, vocabulary, and other language forms are not learned as they are presented or encountered, but are
gradually established in the learner’s repertory on the basis of exposure to comprehensible input. Krashen
claimed that if input is understood and there is enough of it, the necessary grammar is automatically provided.
Speaking is a result of acquisition and not its cause. The ability to communicate in a second language cannot be
taught directly but ‘emerges’ on its own as a result of building competence via comprehensible input. However,
Krashen has argued that speaking is unnecessary for acquiring a second language. In his view, the only role that
the speaker’s output plays is to provide a further source of comprehensible input. Other researchers would argue
that understanding new forms in not enough; the learner must be given the opportunity to produce the new forms.
Swain
(1985) has argued for the importance of “comprehensible output”. Learners can benefit from talking.

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The Affective Filter Hypothesis

According to the Affective Filter Hypothesis, comprehensible input may not be utilized by a second-language
acquirers if there is a ‘mental block’ that prevents them form fully profiting from it (Krashen 1985). The affective
filter acts as a barrier to acquisition: if the filter is ‘down’, the input reaches the LAD and becomes acquired
competence; if the filter is ‘up’, the input is blocked and does not reach the LAD. Krashen maintained that
acquirers need to be open to the input and that when the affective is up, the learner may understand what is seen
and read, but the input will not reach the LAD. This occurs when the acquirer is unmotivated, lacking in
confidence, or concerned with failure. The filter is down when the acquirer is not anxious and is intent on
becoming a member of the group speaking the target language. Many researchers agree with Krashen on basic
assumptions, such as the need to move form grammar-based to communicatively oriented language instruction,
the role of affective factors in language learning, and the importance of acquisitional sequences in
second-language development.
5.3. The rationalism/ cognitive approach (the 1960s-1970s):

Cognitive psychologists sought to discover underlying motivations and deeper structures of human behavior by
using a rational approach. They employed the tools of logic, reason, extrapolation, and inference in order to derive
explanations for human behavior. They asserted that meaning, understanding, and knowing were significant data
for psychological study. Language acquisition is innately determined, that we are born with a built-in device that
predisposes us to language acquisition (LAD: language acquisition device). Chomsky believes that natural
languages are governed by highly abstract and complex rules that not immediately evident in actual utterances
(surface structure). If the child were totally reliant on the data available in the input, he would not be able to
acquire these rules. Therefore, the child must possess a set of innate principles which guide language processing.
These principles comprise Universal Grammar --- the linguistic features and processes which are common to all
natural languages and all language learners. The child’s linguistic development is not a process of developing
fewer and fewer incorrect structures. Rather, the child’s language at any stage is systematic in that child is
constantly forming hypotheses on the basis of the input received and then testing those hypotheses. As the child’s
language develops, those hypotheses get continually revised, reshaped, or sometimes abandoned. Followed in the
1980s and 1990s, new links have emerged with cognitive science (the role of consciousness), with
neuropsychology (modularity of the brain, the left hemisphere is associated with logical, analytical thought, with
mathematical and liner processing of information. The right hemisphere perceives and remembers visual, tactile,
and auditory images), and with sociocultural frameworks which have greatly enriched our perception of the many
facets of second language acquisition.
5.4. Constructivism: (the 1980s-200)

Constructivists argue that all human beings construct their own vision of reality, and therefore multiple contrasting
ways knowing and describing are equally legitimate.
Cognitive factors of second language acquisition Intelligence:

There is clear evidence that L2 students who are above average on formal measures of intelligence tend to do well
in L2 learning. In addition to traditional sense of intelligence defined and measured in terms of (1) linguistic and
(2) logical-mathematical abilities (IQ), Gardner (1983) described five more different forms of knowing as (3)
spatial intelligence (to find your way around an environment), (4) musical intelligence (to perceive and create
pitch and rhythmic patterns), (5) bodily-kinesthetic intelligence(athletic prowess), (6) interpersonal intelligence(to
understand others, how they feel, how they interact with one another), (7) intrapersonal intelligence(the ability to
see oneself, to develop a sense of self-identity), and (8) naturalist intelligence. By broadly defining intelligence as
Gardner has done, we can more easily discern a relationship between intelligence and second language learning.

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For instance, musical intelligence could explain the relative ease that some learners have in perceiving and
producing the intonation patterns of a language.
Interpersonal intelligence is of obvious importance in the communicative process.
Language aptitude: (Is there really such a thing as a gift for language learning, distinct from general
intelligence?) A number of subskills are believed to be predicators of L2 learning success: (1) phonetic coding
ability, (2) grammatical sensitivity, (3) memory abilities, and (4) inductive language ability.
Language learning strategies:

More proficient learners do indeed employ strategies that are different from those used by the less proficient.
However, whether the strategies cause the learning, or the learning itself enables different strategies to be used,
has not been fully clarified.
6. Affective domain of second language acquisition

Affect refers to emotion or feeling. The affective factors are the emotional side of human behavior in the second
language learning process. The development of affective states or feeling involves a variety of personality factors,
feeling both about ourselves and about others with whom we come into contact. Understanding how human
beings feel, respond, believe, and value is an important aspect of a theory of second language acquisition.
Specific affective factors are discussed as follows:
Anxiety:
Anxiety is associated with feelings of uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt, apprehension, or worry. Anxiety can be
experienced at various levels. At the deepest, or global, level, trait anxiety is a more permanent predisposition to
be anxious. Some people are predictably and generally anxious about many things. At a more momentary, or
situational level, state anxiety is experienced in relation to some particular event or act. Foreign language anxiety
focuses more specifically on the situational nature of state anxiety. Three components of foreign language anxiety
have been identified: (1) communication apprehension, arising from learners’ inability to adequately express
mature thoughts and ideas; (2) fear of negative social evaluation, arising from a learner’s need to make a positive
social impression on others; and (3) test anxiety, or apprehension over academic evaluation (Horwitz et al.,
1986).Yet another important insight to be applied to our understanding of anxiety lies in the distinction between
debilitative and facilitative anxiety (Scovel, 1978). We may be inclined to view anxiety as a negative factor,
something to be avoided at all costs (e.g. test anxiety). But the notion of facilitative anxiety is that some concern
over a task to be accomplished is a positive factor. So the next time your students are anxious, you do well to ask
yourself if that anxiety is truly debilitative. It could well be that a little nervous tension in the process is a good
thing. Both too much and too little anxiety may hinder the process of successful second language learning.
Empathy
Empathy is usually described as the projection of one’s own personality into the personality of another in order to
understand him or her better. Language is one of the primary means of empathizing. In order to communicate
effectively, you need to understand the other person’s affective and cognitive states. For instance, in a second
language learning situation, not only must learner-speaker correctly identify cognitive and affective sets in the
hearer, but they must do so in a language in which they are insecure.
Motivation:
Motivation is commonly thought of as an inner drive, impulse, emotion, or desire that moves one to a particular
action. In second language learning, a learner will be successful with the proper motivation.

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Instrumental motivation:
To learn an L2 for some functional reason- to pass an examination, to get a better job, reading technical material,
translation, and so forth.
Integrative motivation:
Learners are interested in the people and culture represented by the target language group. Learners wish to
integrate themselves within the culture of the second language group, to identify themselves with and become a
part of that society. However, some learners may be influenced by a “Machiavellian motivation”- the desire to
learn the L2 in order to manipulate and overcome the people of the target language.
Resultative motivation:
This motivation is the result of learning. Learners who experience success in learning may become more, or in
some contexts, less motivated to learn.
Intrinsic motivation:
Motivation involves the arousal and maintenance of curiosity and can ebb and flow as a result of such factors as
learners’ particular interests and the extent to which they feel personally involved in learning activities. There is
no apparent reward except the activity itself. Intrinsically motivated behaviors are aimed at bringing about certain
internally rewarding consequences, namely, feelings of competence and self-determination.
Extrinsic motivation:
Extrinsically motivated behaviors are carried out in anticipation of a reward from outside and beyond the self.
Typical extrinsic rewards are money, prizes, grades, and even certain types of positive feedback. These five types
of motivation should be seen as complementary rather than as distinct and oppositional. Most situations involve a
mixture of each type of motivation. However, growing stockpile of research on motivation strongly favors
intrinsic motivation, especially for long-term retention (Brown, 1990).
7. Sociocultural perspectives on second language acquisition

Culture is a way of life. It is the context within which we exist, think, feel, and relate to others. Culture might also
be defined as the ideas, customs, skills, arts, and tools that characterize a given group of people in a given period
of time. But culture is more than the sum of its parts. “It is a system of integrated patterns, most of which remain
below the threshold of consciousness, yet all of which govern human behavior” (Condon, 1973). Culture, as an
ingrained set of behaviors and modes of perceptions, becomes highly important in the learning of a second
language. A language is a part of a culture and a culture is a part of a language. The acquisition of a second
language is also the acquisition of a second culture.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
It refers to the idea that language shapes (rather than reflect) one’s world view. It can be summed up as follows:
the background linguistic system of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but
rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental activity, for his analysis of
impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade (Whorf, 1956).
Schumann’s acculturation model

Acculturation is defined by Brown (1980) as ‘the process of becoming adapted to a new culture’.
Linton (1963) described the general process of acculturation as involving modification in attitude, knowledge,
and behavior. The overall process of acculturation demands both social and psychological adaptation.
John Schumann (1978) characterized the relationship between acculturation and second-language acquisition in
the following way:
Second language acquisition is just one aspect of acculturation and the degree to which a learner acculturates to
the target language group will control the degree to which he acquires the second language.

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In this view, acculturation – and hence second-language acquisition – is determined by the degree of social and
psychological ‘distance’ between the learner and the target-language culture.
It is assumed that the more social and psychological distance there is between the second-language learner and
the target-language group, the lower the learner’s degree of acculturation will be toward that group.
Social and psychological distance influence second-language acquisition by determining the amount of contact
learners have with the target language and the degree to which they are open to the input that is available. In a
negative social situation, the learner will receive little input in the second language. In a negative psychological
situation, the learner will fail to utilize available input.
Schumann lists the various factors which determine social and psychological distance. An example of a ‘good’
learning situation is when (1) the target language and L2 groups view each other as social equal; (2) the target
language and L2 groups are both desirous that L2 group will assimilate; (3) both the target language and L2
groups expect the L2 group to share social facilities with the target language group; (4) the L2 group is small and
not very cohesive; (5) the L2 group’s culture is congruent with that of the target language group; (6) both groups
have positive attitudes to each other; (7) the L2 group envisages staying in the target language area for an
extended period.
The psychological factors are affective in nature. They include (1) language shock; (2) culture shock; (3)
motivation; and (4) ego boundaries.
In Schumann’s model, acculturation is the causal variable in the second language learning process. He argued
that the early stages of second language acquisition are characterized by the same processes that are responsible
for the formation of pidgin languages. When there are hindrances to acculturation – when social and/or
psychological distance is great – the learner will not progress beyond the early stages and the language will stay
pidginized.
Schumann documented this process in a case study of a 33-year-old Costa Rican immigrant, Alberto. Alberto’s
interlanguage was characterized by many simplifications and reductions. These simplifications and reductions
Schumann saw to be a form of pidginization, which leads to fossilization when the learner no longer revises the
interlanguage system in the direction of the target language. This process occurred not because of a cognitive
deficit, but because of a minimal amount of acculturation to the target language group.
Pidginization is characteristic of all early second language acquisition.
Evaluation:
The question of causality:
The acculturation hypothesis assumes a causal model in which attitude affects access to input which in turn
affects second language acquisition. Attitude, or the perception of distance between the learner and the target
group, is seen to control behavior. It is possible, however, that successful learners may be more positively
disposed toward the target language group because of their positive experience with the language. Their success
may be more a function of intelligence, social skills, and language learning ability than of perceived distance form
the target language group. Most likely, the line of causality is bi-directional. Perceived distance affects second
language acquisition and is affected by success in second language acquisition.
2. One of the difficulties in Schumann’s hypothesis of social distance is the measurement of actual social distance.
William Acton (1979) devised a measure of perceived social distance. His contention was that it is not
particularly relevant what the actual distance is between cultures since it is what learners perceive that forms their
own reality.
(Some parts are intentionally deleted by the module writer)

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8. Key concepts in second language acquisition
A. Nature vs. nurture

How much of human language learning derives from innate predispositions (genetic pre-programming) and how
much of it derives from social and cultural experiences which influence us as we grow up?
Skinner: Language could be learned primarily by imitating caretakers’ speech. Chomsky: Human language is
too complex to be learned. We must have some innate predisposition to expect natural languages to be
organized in particular ways.
B. Competence and performance

Competence refers to the abstract and hidden representation of language knowledge held inside our heads, with its
potential to create and understand original utterances in a given language (e.g. rules of grammar, vocabulary).
Performance is an imperfect reflection of competence, partly because of the processing complications which are
involved in speaking or other forms of language production, and which lead to errors and slips (e.g. four language
skills).
C. Fossilization
Learners seem to cease to make any visible progress, no matter how many classes they attend, or how actively
they continue to use their second language for communicative purposes.
Psycholinguistic explanation: The language-specific learning mechanisms available to the young child simply
cease to work for older learners, and no amount of effort and study can recreate them.
Sociolinguistic explanation: Older L2 learners do not have the social opportunities, or the motivation, to identify
with the native speaker community.
D. L1 interference as a learner strategy:

Corder (1978) outlines one way in which “interference” can be recast as a learner “strategy” He suggests that
the learner’s L1 may facilitate the developmental process of learning a L2. When learners experience difficulty in
communicating an idea because they lack the necessary target language resources, they will resort to their L1 to
make up the insufficiency. This explains why the L1 is relied on more at the beginning of the learning process
than later. A rather similar proposal is made by Krashen (1981), when he suggests that learners can use the L1 to
initiate utterances when they do not have sufficient acquired knowledge of the target language for this purpose.
Both Corder’s and Krashen’s proposals view the L1 as a resource which learners can use for ad hoc translation to
overcome their limitations.
E. Communication Competence
The term ‘communicative competence’ was coined by Dell Hymes (1967), a sociolinguist who was
convinced that Chomsky’s (1965) notion of competence was too limited. In the 1970s, research on
communicative competence distinguished between linguistic and communicative competence (Hymes 1967) to
highlight the difference between knowledge ‘about’ language forms and knowledge that enables a person to
communicate functionally and interactively.
Cummins (1981) proposed a distinction between cognitive/academic language proficiency (CALP) and
basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS). CALP is that dimension of proficiency in which the learner
manipulates or reflects upon the surface features of language outside of the immediate interpersonal context.
BICS, on the other hand, is the communicative capacity that all children acquire in order to function in daily
interpersonal exchange.
Seminal work on defining communicative competence was carried out by Michael Canale and Merrill Swain
(1980). In Canale and Swain’s (1980), and later in Canale’s (1983) definition, four different components make

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up the construct of communicative competence. The first two subcategories reflect the use of the linguistic system
itself.
Grammatical competence is that aspect of communicative competence that encompassed ‘knowledge of lexical
items and of rules of morphology, syntax, sentence-grammar semantics, and phonology”. It is the competence that
we associate with mastering the linguistic code of a language, the ‘linguistic’ competence of Hymes.
Discourse competence: it is the ability we have to connect sentences in stretches of discourse and to form a
meaningful whole out of a series of utterances. While grammatical competence focuses on sentence-level
grammar, discourse competence is concerned with intersentential relationship.
The last two subcategories define the more functional aspects of communication.
Sociolinguistic competence is the knowledge of the sociocultural rules of language and of discourse. This type of
competence ‘requires an understanding of the social context in which language is used: the roles of the
participants, the information they share, and the function of the interaction. Only in a full context of this kind can
judgments be made on the appropriateness of a particular utterance’ (Savignon 1983).
Strategic competence: “ the verbal and nonverbal communication strategies that may be called into action to
compensate for breakdowns in communication due to performance variables or due to insufficient competence”
(Canale and Swain1980). It is the competence underlying our ability to make repairs, to cope with imperfect
knowledge, and to sustain communication through ‘paraphrase, circumlocution, repetition, hesitation, avoidance,
and guessing, as well as shifts in register and style’ (Savignon 1983).
F. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

CLT is best understood as an approach not a method. Brown (1993) offers the following four interconnected
characteristics as a definition of CLT:
Classroom goals are focused on all of the components of communicative competence and not restricted to
grammatical or linguistic competence. Language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic,
authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes. Organizational language forms are not the central
focus but rather aspects of language that enable the learner to accomplish those purposes.
Fluency and accuracy are seen as complementary principles underlying communicative techniques. At times
fluency may have to take on more importance than accuracy in order to keep learners meaningfully engaged in
language use. In the communicative classroom, students ultimately have to use the language, productively and
receptively, in unrehearsed contexts. Students are given opportunities to focus on their own learning process
through an understanding of their own styles of learning and through the development of appropriate strategies for
autonomous learning. The role of the teacher is that of facilitator and guide, not an all-knowing bestower of
knowledge. CLT suggests that grammatical structure might better be subsumed under various functional
categories. In CLT we pay considerably less attention to the overt presentation and discussion of grammatical
rules than we traditionally did.
CLT often makes it difficult for a nonnative speaking teacher who is not very proficient in the second language to
teach effectively. Dialogues, drills, rehearsed exercises, and discussions of grammatical rues are much simpler for
the average nonnative speaking teacher to contend with.
G. Interlanguage
The term ‘interlanguage’ was coined by Selinker (1969, 1972) to refer to the interim grammars constructed by
second-language learners on their way to the target language. The term won favor over similar constructs, such as
‘approximative system’ (Nemser 1971) and ‘transitional competence’ (Corder 1967). Since the early 1970s
‘interlanguage’ has come to characterize a major approach to second-language research and theory. The
interlanguage is thought to be distinct from both the learner’s first language and form the target language. It
evolves over time as learners employ various internal strategies to make sense of the input and to control their
own output. Selinker (1972) argued that the interlanguage, which he saw to be a separate linguistic system

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resulting form the learner’s attempted production of the target language norm, was the product of five central
cognitive processes involved in second-language learning:
Language transfer from the first language.
Transfer of the training process used to teach the second language.
Strategies of second-language learning.
Strategies of second-language communication.
Overgeneralization of the target language linguistic material.
The development of the interlanguage was seen by Selinker as different from the process of first-language
development because of the likelihood of fossilization in the second language. Fossilization is the state of affairs
that exists when the learner ceases to elaborate the interlanguage in some respect, no matter how long there is
exposure, new data, or new teaching. Interlanguage and learning strategy: Selinker et al. (1975) argued that an
analysis of the children’s speech revealed a definite systematicity in the interlanguage. For Selinker interlanguage
referred to an interim grammar that is a single system composed of rules that have been developed via different
cognitive strategies – for example, transfer, overgeneralization, simplification, and the correct understanding of
the target language. Interlanguage as rule-governed behavior: In contrast to Selinker’s cognitive emphasis,
Adjemian (1976) argues that the systematicity of the interlanguage should be analyzed linguistically as
rule-govern behavior. Like any language system, interlanguage grammars are seen to obey universal linguistic
constraints and evidence internal consistency.
Whereas Selinker’s use of interlanguage stressed the structurally intermediate nature of the learner’s system
between the first and the target language, Adjemian focused on the dynamic character of interlanguage systems,
their permeability. Interlanguage systems are thought to be by their nature incomplete and in a state of flux.
Interlanguage as a set of styles: Tarone (1979) maintained that the interlanguage could be seen as analyzable
into a set of styles that are dependent on the context of use. Tarone proposed a capability continuum, which
includes a set of styles ranging from a stable subordinate style virtually free of first-language influence to a
characteristically superordinate style where the speaker pays a great deal of attention to form and where the
influence of the first language is more likely to be felt. The more careful superordinate style shows the
intervention of a consciously learned rule system. (Capability continuum assumes that the learner’s competence is
made up of a continuum of styles, ranging from the careful to the vernacular. The style used in a particular
situation is determined by the degree of attention paid to language form, which in turn is a reflection of social
factors and personal style.)
More specifically, Tarone (1983) proposed that variability in the interlanguage can be accounted for by a
system of variable and categorical rules based on particular contexts of use. Like Adjemian, Tarone assumed that
the interlanguage is a natural language, obeying the constraints of the same language universals and subject to
analysis by means of standard linguistic techniques. She went beyond Adjemian in claiming that language
production show systematic variability, similar to that demonstrated to exist in the speech of native speakers. Thus
she added to Adjemian’s linguistic perspective a sociolinguistic point of view. For Tarone, interlanguage is not a
single system, but a set of styles that can be used in different social contexts.
To summarize, the views of interlanguage that guides early research saw second-language learners as
possessing a set of rules of intermediate grammars. Slinkier and Adjemian stressed the influence of the
first-language on the emerging interlanguage. The authors differed, however, in that Selinker hypothesized that
interlanguages are the product of different psychological mechanisms than native languages and hence are not
natural language. Adjemian and Tarone viewed interlanguages as operating on the same principles as natural
languages, but Tarone differed form Adjemian in that she stressed the notion of variability in use and the
pragmatic constraints that determine how language is used in context.

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9. The Role of the First Language

Transfer as process: The end result was the same, but the processes differed because of differences in first
language. Speakers of some languages take longer to learn certain forms than do speakers of other languages
because their own first languages have similar forms. Transfer is predicted to occur when the perceived similarity
between the two languages is great and when the structures involved are unmarked. A number of studies (Gass
1979; Jordens 1977; Rutherford 1982) support these predictions. More marked structures are those that the person
thinks of as irregular, infrequent, and semantically opaque. More regular (unmarked) forms are viewed by learners
as transferable to the target language, assuming that the two languages are thought to be similar. The first
language does affect the course of interlanguage development, but this influence is not always predictable.
Interlanguage theory concerned with describing a limited range of second-language phenomena. These include the
question of systematicity and variability in the performance of language learners, the question of how the
emerging system develops and the role of transfer from the first language in this process.
Interlanguage theory has had a relatively minor impact on pedagogy.
Conclusions
To conclude, language teachers ought to be aware of student personality as a factor, in order to optimise their
students’ learning. Teachers can use a variety of activities and assessment methods to suit the various learning
styles and strategies adopted by the students. Additionally, the use of computers (CALL) to aid their teaching is
also a move that is well encouraged and celebrated. A good amalgamation of these strategies and tools should be
on its way to achieving effective language learning and effective language teaching, a goal we all want. Of course,
second language learning is a two-way affair. As much as the teachers are trying their best to cater to their
students’ learning styles and optimise the strategies, the learners have to also do their part in the journey towards
SLA.
References
Alderson J.C. (1999). Exploding myths: Does the number of hours per week matter? Paper presented at the 9th
IATEFL-Hungary Conference in Györ. [online]. Retrieved from
http://www.examsreform.hu/Media/konyvPart2/Chapter%2017.pdf
Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Bongaerts, T., Planken, B., & Schils, E. (1995). Can late starters attain a native accent in foreign language: A test
of the Critical Period Hypothesis. In D. Singleton and Z. Lengyel (eds) The Age Factor in Second Language
Acquisition. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Brown, H. D. (2002). Principles of language learning and teaching. White Plains, NY:
Longman.
Brown, H. D. (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching. W hite Plains, NY:
Pearson.
Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching languages to young learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Djigunovic, J. M. (2012). Attitudes and Motivation in Early Foreign Language Learning. Centre for Educational
Policy Studies Journal, 2(3), 55-74. Retrieved from www.cepsj.si/pdfs/cepsj_2_3/cepsj_2_3_pp55_mihaljevic
djigunovic.
Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Teaching and researching motivation. Harlow, England: Longman.

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TASK 2: Read the work of Shiamaa Abd EL Fattah Torky entitled The Effectiveness of a
Task- Based Instruction program in Developing the English Language Speaking Skills of
Secondary Stage Students (Reading Material 2). T his material will enlighten you about
the fundamental principles of speaking. After carefully scrutinizing the given material,
you are going to write a speech that discusses the characteristics and relevance of
speaking. Be guided by the following:

1. Imagine that you are an invited guest speaker in a convention of English
teachers. You are not going to provide a lecture-discussion but only an
inspirational or motivational message. You are tasked to enlighten the
participants about the characteristics and relevance of speaking in the 21st
century teaching of English.
2. Capture the salient points from the material provided to you and include them in
your written speech.
3. You are limited to one to two pages. There is no limit in the number of words.
5. For purposes of readability, electronic outputs should be encoded using Century
Gothic font size 12. Handwritten outputs should be rendered in print, not in script.

Lifted from:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3c4b/ca3b681afe7a7ba2766e786b0f26c77006c5.pdf?_ga=2.25440053.90832310.1
598528644-1930745253.1598528644
The Effectiveness of a Task- Based Instruction program in

Developing the English Language Speaking Skills of Secondary Stage Students
By Shiamaa Abd EL Fattah Torky
Assistant Researcher at the Curricula Development Department
The National Center for Educational Research and Development

Speaking skill
Defining Speaking:
Reviewing previous research related to defining speaking, it was noticed that two main
approaches are adopted to define speaking, the bottom-up and the top down approach.
Explaining the bottom up view, Bygate (1987: 5-6) points out that traditionally the focus in
speaking was on motor perceptive skills. Within this context, speaking is defined as the
production of auditory signals designed to produce differential verbal responses in a listener. It
is considered as combining sounds in a systematic way, according to language specific
principles to form meaningful utterances. This approach is adopted by audio-lingualism.
Eventually, in terms of teaching speaking, the bottom-up approach suggests that we should
start with teaching the smallest units- soundsand move through mastery of words and
sentences to discourse (Cornbleet & Carter, 2001: 18).
Actually, the problem with this approach is that it overlooks the interactive and social aspect of
speaking, restricting it only to its psychomotor sense. Moreover, it is hard to ensure a satisfactory
transition from supposed learning in the classroom to real life use of the skill.
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Alternatively, Bygate (1998: 23) advocates adopting a definition of speaking based on
interactional skills which involve making decision about communication. This is considered a
top- down view of speaking.
Adopting this view, Eckard & Kearny (1981), Florez (1999) and Howarth (2001) define speaking
as a two–way process involving a true communication of ideas, information or feelings. This
top-down view considers the spoken texts the product of cooperation between two or more
interactants in shared time, and a shared physical context. Thus, proponents of this view
suggest that, rather than teaching learners to make well-formed sentences and then -putting
these to use in discourse we should encourage learners to take part in spoken discourse from
the beginning and then they will acquire the smaller units (Nunan, 1989, 32).
Attempting to elaborate more on the interactive nature of speaking, Burns & Joyce (1997) and
Luoma (2004: 2) define speaking as an interactive process of constructing meaning that
involves producing, receiving and processing information. Its form and meaning are
dependent on the context in which it occurs, including the participants themselves, the
physical environment, and the purposes for speaking. It is often spontaneous, openended, and
evolving. However, speech is not always unpredictable. Language functions (or patterns) that
tend to recur in certain discourse situations can be identified.
It is this latter approach that is adopted in the current study, and speaking is defined as the
learner's ability to express himself/herself orally, coherently, fluently and appropriately in a given
meaningful context.

Aspects of speaking:
Eventually, aspects of the speaking skill need to be closely scrutinized and put into
consideration. These aspects pose some challenges and identify some guidelines for
understanding this skill and hence design instructional activities to prepare learners to
communicate effectively in real life situations.
a. Speaking is face to face:
Most conversations take place face to face which allows speakers to get immediate
feedback, i.e. “Do listeners understand? Are they in agreement? Do they sympathize
(Cornbleet &Carter, 2001: 16). Thus communication through speaking has many assets, such as
facial expressions, gestures and even body movements. Speaking also occurs, most of the time,
in situations where participants or interlocutors are present. Such factors facilitate
communication (El Fayoumy, 1997: 10, Widdowson, 1998 & Burns, 1998).
b. Speaking is interactive:
Whether we are speaking face-to –face or over the telephone, to one person or a small group,
the wheels of conversation usually turn smoothly, with participants offering contributions at
appropriate moments, with no undue gaps or everyone talking over each other (Bygate, 1998:
30 and Cornbleet & Carter,
2001: 27)
Turn taking, a main feature in interaction, is an unconscious part of normal conversation. Turn
takings are handled and signaled differently across different cultures, thus causing possible
communication difficulties in conversation between people of different cultures and languages
(Mc Donough & Mackey, 2000: 84).
c. Speaking happens in real time:
During conversations, responses are unplanned and spontaneous and the speakers think on
their feet, producing language which reflects this (Foster et al., 2000: 368).
These time constraints affect the speaker's ability to plan, to organize the message, and to
control the language being used. Speakers often start to say something and change their mind

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midway; which is termed a false start. The speaker's sentences also cannot be as long or as
complex as in writing. Similarly, speakers occasionally forget things they intended to say; or they
may even forget what they have already said, and so they repeat themselves (Miller, 2001: 27).
This implies that the production of speech in real time imposes pressures, but also allows
freedoms in terms of compensating for these difficulties. The use of formulaic expressions,
hesitation devices, selfcorrection, rephrasing and repetition can help speakers become more
fluent and cope with real time demands (Bygate, 1987: 21; Foster et al., 2000 and Hughes, 2002:
76).
Actually, exposing students to these spoken discourse features facilitates their oral production
and helps them compensate for the problems they encounter. It also helps them sound normal
in their use of the foreign language.

Spoken versus written discourse:
Understanding the subtle differences between written and spoken discourse helps in planning
instruction in the light of these distinctions. It helps also to overcome the problems with
traditional approaches to teaching speaking overlooking such differences.
Basically, spoken discourse is different form written discourse in three main parameters:
planning, contextualization and formality. Speech is more commonly unplanned,
contextualized and informal than writing. In addition, speech is more reciprocal than is writing
(Yule, 1989: 165; Nunan, 1989: 26; Eggings, 1990 and Carter & McCarthy, 1997).
Specifically, speaking can be distinguished from writing in many areas.
These include:
✆ Discourse structure: the spoken discourse is characterized by: reciprocal openings and
closings, interactive negotiation of meaning and conversation structures. Besides, it is
characterized by the use of simple linking devices (discourse devices) such as ‘and, ' but’,
'anyway', 'right' rather than complicated ones used in written discourse (Nunan, 1999: 22;
Dinapoli, 2000: 1 and Miller, 2001).
✆ Typical features of the speech stream (e.g. segmental and suprasegmental features,
pauses, hesitations, interruptions, and false starts) (Bygate, 1998, b: 21).
✆ Features related to the cultural nature of speaking. The spoken discourse contains numerous
social and contextual factors as well as pragmatic presuppositions (Carter & McCarthy, 1997:
13).
✆ Grammatical and lexical features: As for grammar, the spoken language is characterized by:
x Contractions and elliptical constructions lacking subjects or
rejoinders; ex: (sure, me too, or not now, thanks) (Widdowson, 1998). x Incomplete sentences
called “utterances” (Yule, 1989: 170).
x Fronting which refers to the movement of an element from its position and its relocation as the
first element in a construction to allow a focus to fall on it (Nunan, 1989: 26 and Foster el al,
2000)
As for lexis, spoken English has a lower lexical density than written English, using more grammar
words and more verb phrases than noun phrases. Furthermore, spoken language is
characterized by what is called "vague language" which refers to objects and events in general
terms especially when speakers are uncertain or don’t want to sound too particular; e.g. (by
the window or something) (Widdowson, 1998).
Spoken language is characterized also by fixed expressions that play an important part in
enhancing fluency during speaking. Examples of fixed expressions include expressions such as
"a matter of fact, once and for all…etc"(Carter & McCarthy, 1997: 18 and Segaowitz, 2000).


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Purpose of speaking:
It was argued that the purpose of speaking can be either transactional or interactional.
Apparently, there are some differences between the spoken language used in both
transactional and interactional discourse.
In transactional discourse, language is used primarily for communicating information. Language
serving this purpose is 'message' oriented rather than 'listener' oriented (Nunan, 1989: 27).
Clearly, in this type of interaction, accurate and coherent communication of the message is
important, as well as confirmation that the message has been understood. Examples of
language being used primarily for a transactional purpose are: news broadcasts, descriptions,
narrations and instructions (Richards, 1990: 54- 55). Speaking turns serving this purpose tend to
be long and involve some prior organization of content and use of linguistic devices to signal
either the organization or type of information that will be given (Basturkmen, 2002: 26).
On the other hand, some conversations are interactional with the purpose of establishing or
maintaining a relationship. This latter kind is sometimes called the interpersonal use of
language. It plays an important social role in oiling the wheels of social intercourse (Yule, 1989:
169). Examples of interactional uses of language are greetings, small talks, and compliments.
Apparently, the language used in the interactional mode is listener oriented. Speakers' talk in
this type tends to be limited to quite short turns (Dornyei & Thurrell, 1994: 43 and Richards, 1990:
54-55).
However, in spite of the distinctions between the two types, in most circumstances,
interactional language is combined with transactional language. This helps to ease the
transactional tasks to be done by keeping good social relations with others. In other words, we
can say that speakers do one thing by doing another (Brazil, 1995: 29). So both purposes can
be viewed as two dimensions of spoken interaction.
Analyzing speaking purposes more precisely, Kingen (2000: 218) combines both the
transactional and interpersonal purposes of speaking into an extensive list of twelve categories
as follows:

1- Personal - expressing personal feelings, opinions, beliefs and ideas.
2. Descriptive- describing someone or something, real or imagined.
3. Narrative-creating and telling stories or chronologically sequenced events.
4. Instructive-giving instructions or providing directions designed to produce an outcome.
5. Questioning-asking questions to obtain information.
6. Comparative-comparing two or more objects, people, ideas, or opinions to make
judgments about them.
7. Imaginative-expressing mental images of people, places, events, and objects.
8. Predictive-predicting possible future events.
9. Interpretative-exploring meanings, creating hypothetical deductions, and considering
inferences.
10. Persuasive-changing others’ opinions, attitudes, or points of view, or influencing the
behavior of others in some way.
11. Explanatory-explaining, clarifying, and supporting ideas and opinions.
12. Informative-sharing information with others

This list correspond closely to the language functions explained by Halliday (1975).

Speaking genres:

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The genre theory assumes that different speech events result in different types of texts, which
are distinct in terms of their overall structure and kinds of grammatical items typically
associated with them (Hughes, 2002: 83). Carter and McCarthy (1997) classify speaking extracts
in terms of genres as follows:

h Narrative: A series of everyday anecdotes told with active listener participation. h Identifying:
Extracts in which people talk about themselves, their
biography, where they live, their jobs, their likes and dislikes.
h Language-in-action: Data recorded while people are doing things such
as cooking, packing, moving furniture… etc. h Comment-elaboration: People giving casual
opinions and commenting
on things, other people, events and so on. h Debate and argument: Data, in which people take up
positions, pursue
arguments and expound on their opinions.
h Decision-making and negotiating outcomes: Data illustrating ways in which people work towards
decisions/consensus or negotiate their way through problems towards solutions.
It is recognized that no speech genre can be entirely discrete; for example, narratives can be
embedded within other main generic categories. Furthermore, speaking genres overlap with
language functions explained before.

Speaking subskills:
Many people believe that informal everyday conversation is random. Moreover, unfortunately,
most ELT course books do not deal with speaking by breaking it down into micro- skills. Instead,
they often have the vague aim of "promoting learner's fluency" (Sayer, 2005: 14).
However, a fundamental issue to understand the nature of speaking is to analyze it in terms of
competencies- underlying abilities- that characterize the speaking proficiency. It is generally
assumed that such underlying abilities have some sort of structure, made up of different
components, with some sort of interaction and interrelationship between them. It is also
assumed that different performances draw upon these underlying abilities in different but
comprehensible ways (Bachman, 1990 and Widdowson, 1998).
Of course, identifying these competencies will help in teaching them and hence determining
how far they have been achieved.
Eventually, some of the taxonomies used to define speaking sub-skills adopt a communicative
stance assuming that speaking is mainly used for communication. These are mainly general
models of language ability that are used to analyze speaking as well as other skills. However,
there are other taxonomies that are considered speaking-specific which concentrate on
distinguished characteristics of speaking. These taxonomies are based on analyzing
competencies underlying conversational skills.
The models or taxonomies belonging to both previous categories provide alternative
frameworks for defining speaking skills. One model can be selected or several ones can be
integrated to provide a more comprehensive perspective of speaking ability (Luoma, 2004: 60).


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TASK 3: Read the work of Jim Meyer entitled What is Literature? A Definition Based on
Prototypes (Reading Material 3). T his material will give you a background on the
definition of literature and its importance. After you read the material, compose a free
verse poem that explains the importance of literature. Be guided by the following:

1. Your poem should contain five stanzas and each stanza should contain four
lines.
2. Center your poem’s message and theme on the discussion of the importance of
literature specially in the context of 21st century English teaching. Cite some
principles that you have acquired from the reading materials.
3. Since this is a free verse poem, you are not required to follow metrical
measurements neither sound patterns. But you may also include these poetic
elements.
5. For purposes of readability, electronic outputs should be encoded using Century
Gothic font size 12. Handwritten outputs should be rendered in print, not in script.

Lifted from:
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED461270#:~:text=What%20Is%20Literature%3F-,A%20Definition%20Based%20on%20Prototyp
es.,texts%20to%20be%20called%20literature.

What is Literature?
A Definition Based on Prototypes
Jim Meyer
Most definitions of literature have been criterial definitions, definitions based on a list of criteria which all literary
works must meet. However, more current theories of meaning take the view that definitions are based on
prototypes: there is broad agreement about good examples that meet all of the prototypical characteristics, and
other examples are related to the prototypes by family resemblance. For literary works, prototypical
characteristics include careful use of language, being written in a literary genre (poetry, prose fiction, or drama),
being read aesthetically, and containing many weak implicatures.
Understanding exactly what literature is has always been a challenge; pinning down a definition has proven to be
quite difficult. In fact, at times one seems to be reduced to saying, “I know it when I see it,” or perhaps, “Anything
is literature if you want to read it that way.” Sometimes the motivation for a particular definition seems like the
work of copyright lawyers, aimed primarily at stopping people from using the word ‘literature’ for works which
have not been licensed as literature by…well, by The Critics, by the keepers of the tradition, by “all high school
English teachers,” and so on. Almost no one is now so naive as to think that The Critics, the high school teachers,
or anyone else has a monolithic front on the question—yet most discussions seem to veer either towards an
authoritarian definition based on certain critical assumptions, or towards a definition based solely on whatever a
particular reader chooses to call literature.

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To a member of a college English department who is a linguist rather than a literary scholar, this can seem silly.
After all, the word ‘literature’ is a word in the English language; like all words, it is used by perhaps millions of
speakers, speakers who come from vastly different backgrounds and who have quite divergent personal
experiences with, and views on, literary texts. And like all words, it is used fairly successfully; speakers and
listeners generally communicate adequately, despite this variety of experience, background, and training.
If we assume that a definition of literature should be, in many important ways, like definitions of other words in
the language, we will perhaps find a more fruitful approach to the term. Here I will first present two different
approaches to definition—the criterial approach and the prototype approach—and then suggest some features of a
prototypical literary work.
The Criterial Approach

The usual approach in defining a word in English is to provide a list of criteria which must be met. For example, a
bird might be defined as an animal which has feathers, which has wings, and which lays eggs. If an animal meets
all of these criteria, it is a bird; if it does not (for example, a bat neither has feathers nor lays eggs), it is not a bird.
Other characteristics of some birds—that they fly, for example, or that they sing—are not relevant in the
definition, since they are not criteria which are met by all birds. This approach has also been called the checklist
approach; if all the items on the list are checked off, the word applies. It is characterized by “clear, inflexible
boundaries” and by categories which are “internally defined, i.e., defined on the basis of the properties of the
members” (Hohulin 1987:4).
There are many examples of definitions of literature which follow this approach. For example, many of the essays
in Hernadi 1978, What Is Literature?, attempt a criterial definition:
To speak sweepingly one can say, summarizing, that in antiquity and in the Renaissance, literature or letters were
understood to include all writing of quality with any pretense to permanence (Wellek 1978:20).
Let me, then, end with my own stipulative definition of literature. Literature includes any text worthy to be taught
to students by teachers of literature, when these texts are not being taught to students in other departments of a
school or university (Hirsch 1978:34).
Even definitions which focus more intentionally on a shifting understanding of literature reveal this criterial
approach:
I should say, then, that literature is a canon which consists of those works in language by which a community
defines itself through the course of its history. It includes works primarily artistic and also those whose aesthetic
qualities are only secondary. The self-defining activity of the community is conducted in the light of the works, as
its members have come to read them (or concretize them) (McFadden 1978:56).
In all of these cases, the attempt is to provide criteria which must be met by all texts in order for them to be called
literature. The criteria may be based in the text (as in Wellek) or in a community (as in McFadden and Hirsch), but
the criteria must be met.
The Prototype Approach

A different approach to the meaning of words, generally called the prototype approach, focuses not on a list of
criteria which must be met by each example, but on an established prototype, a particularly good example of the
word, to which other examples of the word bear some resemblance. This approach is generally credited to the
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, although he did not use the word ‘prototype’. In the classic passage on this
topic, Wittgenstein addressed the word ‘game’ and argued that, instead of a list of criteria, we find a family
resemblance:

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Consider for example the proceedings that we call “games”. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games,
Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? … If you look at them you will not see something that is
common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that.
…The result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing:
sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.
I can think of no better expression to characterise the se similarities than “family resemblances”; for the
various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc., etc.
overlap and criss-cross in the same way. —And I shall say: “games” form a family (Wittgenstein 1953:31-32).
This approach to the meaning of words has been further developed by many linguists—
Labov, Lakoff, and others; a good summary can be found in works such as Jean Aitchison’s Words in the Mind
(1987) and John Taylor’s Linguistics Categorization (1989). Here I will present results of two of the
better-known experiments conducted by psychologists and linguists in this domain.
Coleman and Kay, in their article “Prototype semantics: the English word lie” (1981), present experimental results
which are interesting because their research deals with a rather abstract word, the English noun ‘lie’. In Coleman
and Kay’s analysis, a prototypical lie has three features:
the speaker asserts something which is untrue; the speaker believes that it is untrue; and the speaker’s intention is
to deceive. A set of situations was devised in which these three features were present in all possible combinations,
and subjects were asked to note whether they would consider the example to be a lie and how confident they were
that other speakers would agree with them.
The results of the experiment were interesting and provided strong support for the prototype view of word
meaning. There was great agreement when all three features were present; less agreement when only two were
present (e.g., in a “social lie,” when the speaker says something which is false but without the intention to deceive,
as in “I’ve had a lovely time”); and there was still less agreement when only one was present (e.g., in an honest
mistake, when the speaker says something which is in fact false but which the speaker believes to be true and thus
utters without intention to deceive).
Another set of experiments on prototypes was conducted by Eleanor Rosch and reported in 1975 in the Journal
of Experimental Psychology: General. Among other tests, Rosch gave subjects a list of birds and asked them,
“How good an example of the category is this word?” The subjects showed amazing agreement, especially for the
best example in the category. For birds, for example, the “birdiest bird” was a robin; other birds which were
considered good examples were canaries, doves, and sparrows. Birds which were ranked lower—which were
considered to be not such good examples of the category ‘bird’—were owls, ducks, ostriches, and penguins.
These experiments provide us with a better understanding of prototypes. For the word ‘bird’, for example, a
criterial definition is possible, and all of the examples used by Rosch would meet the criterial definition given
above. There is, nevertheless, a difference in the way speakers think of the various birds—all of which meet the
criteria equally well. Apparently speakers organize their mental dictionary by selecting a particular ideal example
and then by matching other examples with it, using perhaps a kind of family resemblance framework, such as that
suggested by Wittgenstein. On the other hand, Coleman and Kay’s work provides us with an example of a
prototype for a word which cannot be adequately defined by the criterial approach. Their work suggests, again, that
the mental dictionary is organized by prototypes, even when such prototypes are rather abstract concepts.
One important feature of the prototype approach needs to be highlighted here. Note that all of Rosch’s birds were,
in fact, birds. The fact that an ostrich is not a prototypical bird—not a good example of the category ‘bird’—does
not change the fact that it is, in fact, a bird. In Coleman and Kay’s work, one of the features which they tested was

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whether the subject was confident that other speakers would agree. For words such as ‘lie’, the prototype may be
an example on which everyone agrees with confidence; for other examples of the category, speakers may either
disagree or may agree but with less confidence.
The Literary Prototype

Working from the prototype approach to word meaning, then, I have tried to develop an answer to the question,
“What is literature?” Let me reiterate that this is not a checklist approach: I do not intend to eliminate from the
category of literature works which meet five, or three, or only one of the characteristics. Rather, as in the work of
Coleman and Kay, I believe that speakers of English will show the strongest agreement, and will express the
strongest confidence in their judgment, on works which have all of these characteristics.
I suggest, then, that prototypical literary works:
⬧ are written texts
⬧ are marked by careful use of language, including features such as creative metaphors, well-turned phrases, elegant
syntax, rhyme, alliteration, meter
⬧ are in a literary genre (poetry, prose fiction, or drama) ⬧ are read aesthetically ⬧ are intended by the author to be
read aesthetically
⬧ contain many weak implicatures (are deliberately somewhat open in interpretation)
Written Texts, Marked by Careful Use of Language, in a Literary Genre

The most basic characteristic of literature, it seems to me, is that a literary work is a verbal text. Further, a good
example of a literary text will be written: although we can speak of oral literature, the fact that we need to use the
qualifier ‘oral’ indicates that such texts are not the best examples—not the prototypes—of literature.
That characteristic alone would include all kinds of texts which might be considered literature: cereal boxes, found
poems, advertisements, shopping lists. And if some wish to call such texts literature, I have no objection; these
characteristics, remember, are not a checklist which will keep some texts out of the category of literature.
However, prototype theory suggests that there will be less agreement on calling these literature, and that those
speakers of English who do so will express less confidence that everyone will agree with them.
In fact, the second characteristic listed above is also quite important: that literary texts are marked by careful use of
language, including features such as creative metaphors, well-turned phrases, elegant syntax, rhyme, alliteration,
meter. This, it seems to me, is quite significant in establishing the meaning of the word ‘literature’: on the basis of
this criterion, carefully-written personal essays are more likely to be considered literary than are, for example,
encyclopedia articles. This characteristic may also provide some explanation for the use of the word ‘literature’ to
mean the published research in a particular field: such literature, in addition to be written text, must also exhibit
features of careful use of language according to particular standards.
However, personal essays and researched articles do not meet the third characteristic: prototypical literary works
are written in the literary genres of poetry, prose fiction, and drama. Note that I am not restricting the term
‘literature’ to these three genres; rather, I suggest that works in these three genres provide, to speakers of English,
the best examples of the word ‘literature’. Works in other genres are often considered literature, but again
terminology which is used to describe such works—terms like ‘literary non-fiction’—indicate that such texts are
not prototypical literary works.
Aesthetic Reading and the Author’s Intention

In the example of the word ‘bird’, we noted that the prototypical bird—the birdiest bird—had features which were,
from a criterial approach, not necessary to the definition. Thus, birds which fly and sing and are of a particular
size, birds such as robins and canaries and sparrows, were consistently ranked as better examples of the category

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‘bird’ than were birds which do not fly or sing, birds such as owls and penguins and ostriches. Flying, singing, and
fitting into an averagesize cage are not features of the criterial definition of ‘bird’; they are, however,
characteristics of prototypical birds.
For the term ‘literature’, I believe it is important to note that prototypical literary works cannot be identified solely
on the basis of their written forms. We must also consider the way in which readers interact with them. I have used
the term ‘aesthetic’ as proposed by Louise Rosenblatt in her work The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The
transactional theory of the literary work (1978). This is her definition of aesthetic reading:
The reader performs very different activities during aesthetic and nonaesthetic readings. The contrast derives
primarily from the different in the reader’s focus of attention during the reading-event.
In nonaesthetic reading, the reader’s attention is focused primarily on what will remain as the residue after the
reading—the information to be acquired, the logical solution to a problem, the actions to be carried out….
In aesthetic reading, in contrast, the reader’s primary concern is with what happens during the actual reading event.
Though, like the efferent reader of a law text, say, the reader of Frost’s “Birches” must decipher the images or
concepts or assertions that the words point to, he also pays attention to the associations, feelings, attitudes, and
ideas that these words and their referents arouse within him. “Listening to” himself, he synthesizes these elements
into a meaningful structure. In aesthetic reading, the reader’s attention is centered directly on what he is living
through during his relationship with that particular text (Rosenblatt 1978:23-25; emphasis in the original).
In other words, a reader reads aesthetically when the main purpose of reading is not to derive information, facts,
date to be remembered. Of course we may well remember what we read aesthetically—but that is not our primary
focus in reading. Readers who read mystery novels aesthetically may well reread the same novel many times, with
increased enjoyment; for me, Dorothy Sayers’s mystery Murder Must Advertise falls into the category of a novel
which I reread regularly, despite the fact that I know every detail of the plot quite well.
I suggest, however, that a prototypical literary work must meet an additional qualification: in addition to the
reader’s adoption of an aesthetic stance towards the work, there must be evidence of the author’s intention. Here
my list of characteristics is not intended to probe the brain of the author, but rather to provide a simple statement
about words which can be arranged by editors to look like poems but which were not written as poems by their
authors. Perhaps the best known example comes from this passage by Walter Pater from his essay on the
Renaissance:
The presence that rose thus so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years
men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all “the ends of the world are come,” and the eyelids are a
little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange
thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek
goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul
with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in
that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust
of Rome, the mysticism of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan
world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the Vampire, she has been
dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day
about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy,
and, as St Anne, was the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives
only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The
fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern philosophy has
conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life.

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Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea (Pater
1986:150).
This passage is taken from the middle of a long essay on Renaissance art; its style is fairly typical of the essay of a
whole, and not atypical of Pater’s style. Admittedly Pater’s style is extreme for an essayist. Yet one sentence from
this essay was taken by William Butler Yeats and published as the opening poem in the Oxford Book of Modern
Verse, which he edited, in this form (Yeats 1936:1):
Mona Lisa
Walter Pater
She is older than the rocks among which she sits;
Like the Vampire,
She has been dead many times,
And learned the secrets of the grave;
And has been a diver in deep seas,
And keeps their fallen day about her;
And trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants;
And, as Leda,
Was the mother of Helen of Troy,
And, as St Anne,
Was the mother of Mary;
And all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes,
And lives
Only in the delicacy
With which it has moulded the changing lineaments, And tinged the eyelids and the hands.
It seems to me that most readers, meeting the poem version, would be more confident in calling it literature than
they would be the original version; in this judgment they are reflecting the earlier characteristic, that prototypical
literary works are in literary genres such as poetry (rather than in genres such as art criticism or effusive Victorian
essay). Yet, I think, the fact that Pater did not write his sentence as a poem—that this particular format is due to an
editor, even though the editor is a distinguished poet—would make most speakers of English less confident in
calling this literature. We are more likely to call a text literary if we know that the author intended it to be
presented as a poem (or as prose fiction, or as a drama).
Weak Implicatures and Openness

Finally, I believe that prototypical literary works are characterized by a more open interpretation. In this I have
been influenced by several works in the linguistic area of pragmatics, particularly Sperber and Wilson’s
Relevance (1986) and Blakemore’s further development of their ideas in Understanding Utterances (1992).
In pragmatics there is an important distinction between ‘explicatures’ and ‘implicatures ’ in understanding the
meaning of a text. An explicature is the semantic representation which is present in the linguistic cues of an
utterance; an implicature depends on the explicatures (the propositions which are expressed) together with the
context. In one of Blakemore’s examples, “The park is some distance from my house,” the explicature is “only a
trivially true proposition,” whereas the implicature is something like this: “The park is further from my house than
you might think” (1992:81).
However, these writers are careful to emphasize that speakers may not always have a specific meaning to
communicate. In the example above, the meaning “The park is further from my house than you might think”
results from a strong implicature: given the context and the assumption that speakers intend to be relevant, we are

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fairly sure that that meaning is what the speaker intended to convey. In other cases, an utterance may contain weak
implicatures—meanings which are present but which are less strongly present. As Blakemore puts it:
Speakers do not always intend to communicate a specific set of assumptions: sometimes the speaker’s intentions
are less determinate so the hearer is simply encouraged to think along certain lines without necessarily coming to
any specific conclusion (1992:168).
Every hearer (or reader) is guided and encouraged by the text in the sense that it gives access to contextual
assumptions which yield implicatures… A creative hearer is encouraged to take a greater share of the
responsibility in the interpretation process, so that the extra effort she invests is rewarded by a wide array of very
weak implicatures, which she is encouraged to explore (1992:172).
In other words, in some utterances, the speaker or writer does not have one particular meaning to convey; rather,
speakers are invited to pursue many different interpretations without the assumption that they will find the sole
correct one. Their reward lies, not in getting the information, but in experiences a greater sense of intimacy with
the writer.
And this is the definition of poetic effect which these authors suggest: “the effect of an utterance which achieves
most of its relevance through a wide array of weak implicatures” (Blakemore 1992:157). This is the final
characteristic I propose for a prototypical literary work: a prototypical literary work contains many weak
implicatures, so that readers are invited to think of many propositions which are only weakly present.
To illustrate these last three characteristics, I provide two texts. The first is an excerpt from Irma Rombauer and
Marion Rombauer Becker’s majestic cookbook, Joy of Cooking ( 1975:507508):
About Tongue
Lucky indeed is the cook with the gift of tongues! No matter from which source—beef, calf, lamb or pork—the
smaller-sized tongues are usually preferable. The most commonly used and best flavored, whether fresh, smoked
or pickled, is beef tongue. For prime texture, it should be under 3 pounds.
Scrub the tongue well. If it is smoked or pickled, you may wish to blanch it first, simmering it about 10 minutes.
Immerse the tongue in cold water. After draining, cook as for Boiled Fresh tongue, below. If the tongue is to be
served hot, drain, plunge it into cold water for a moment so you can handle it, skin it and trim it by removing the
roots, small bones and gristle. Return it very briefly to the hot cooking water to reheat before serving.
If the tong ue is to be served cold, allow it to cool just enough to handle comfortably. It skins easily at this point
but not if you let it get cold. Trim and return it to the pot to cool completely in the cooking liquor. It is attractive
served with Chaud-Froid Sauce or in Aspic, see below.
To carve tongue, cut nearly through at the hump parallel to the base. But toward the tip, better looking slices can
be made if the cut is diagonal.
[Recipes follow: Boiled Fresh Beef Tongue; Beef Tongue with Raisin Sauce;
Boiled Smoked, Corned or Pickled Tongue; Tongue Baked in Creole Sauce; Tongue in Aspic. Under Boiled Fresh
Beef Tongue, the writers recommend that tongue be served with Hot Mustard Sauce, Piquant Sauce, or
Horseradish Sauce.]
About Heart
Heart, which is firm and rather dry, is best prepared by slow cooking. It is muscle, not organ meat, and so may be
used in many recipes calling for ground meat. Before cooking, wash it well, removing fat, arteries, veins and
blood, and dry carefully. A 4- to 5-pound beef heart will serve 6; a veal heart will serve one.
[Recipes follow: Baked Stuffed Heart with Apple and Onion Dressing; Braised Heart Slices in Sour Sauce.]

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Although this text certainly bears testimony to the personality of the writers and hints at some metaphoric
interpretations (“Lucky indeed is the cook with the gift of tongues”), most speakers of English would not regard
this work as a strong example of literature. It may be read aesthetically by some readers, but most would read it
efferently, for the information contained; similarly, it is clear that the writers intend for us to read it for its
information.
On the other hand, Elaine Magarrell’s poem, “Joy of Cooking”—although strikingly similar to the cookbook
excerpt above—is closer to the prototype:
I have prepared my sister’s tongue, scrubbed and skinned it, trimmed the roots, small bones, and gristle.
Carved through the hump it slices thin and neat. Best with horseradish and economical—it probably will grow
back. Next time perhaps a creole sauce or mold of aspic?
I will have my brother’s heart, which is firm and rather dry, slow cooked. It resembles muscle more than organ
meat and needs an apple-onion stuffing to make it interesting at all. Although beef heart serves six my brother’s
heart barely feeds two. I could also have it braised and served in sour sauce.
Here the metaphoric sense of ‘tongue’ and ‘heart’ strike us immediately. We begin to explore several weak
implicatures: ‘tongue’ as the organ of speech, a sharp tongue, and so on. The words are nearly identical to the
cookbook, yet we are reacting quite differently. As readers, we are probably reading aesthetically, not for the
information we will take away, but for “the associations, feelings, attitudes, and ideas that these words and their
referents arouse within” us (Rosenblatt 1978:25). We are also fairly certain that the writer intends for us to read in
this way, and we find that pursuing the weak implicatures yields results. This text is much closer to the
prototypical literary work.
Can This Definition Be Applied?

As I have taught introductory courses for undergraduate English majors, my students and I have tried to refine
these characteristics and to apply them to written texts. On the whole we have been fairly satisfied that this set of
characteristics describes prototypical literary texts—texts which are felt to be good examples of the category called
literature, texts which speakers would agree belong to that category.
We have looked at texts which we felt were not prototypical literary texts to see if they would be described as such
by these characteristics. Do popular romances meet all of these characteristics? Probably not: although they can be
read—and usually are read—aesthetically, they are not typically marked by many weak implicatures. The text is
more straightforward than a literary text would be. They are, in fact, quite predictable—in style as well as in
content, so that the writing is probably not marked by prototypical features such as creative metaphor. In fact, this
corresponds to our sense of whether these works are literary. Some might say that they are— many, or even most
people, might say that they are. But there would be some disagreement, some hesitation, some lack of confidence.
They are thus not ideal examples of literature.
A category of texts that may be problematic for us is children’s literature, such as C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of
Narnia or Susan Cooper’s series The Dark Is Rising. These texts would, I think, meet all of the characteristics
established above, yet I suspect that they do not belong in the category of prototypical literature—or do not belong
there as firmly as other, more prototypical, works. To return to Rosch’s bird example, such works may be canaries
or sparrows but are probably not robins.
Finally, some have suggested that an additional characteristic should be added: that prototypical literary works
deal with the human condition and experience in some way. When I have discussed this with my students,
however, they have been loath to accept this characteristic. How do works such as Orwell’s Animal Farm or
Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (more commonly known as “Daffodils”) deal with human
experience? It is only through the last characteristic we have mentioned: through the many weak implicatures
which we are invited to pursue as we read, implicatures which lead us to consider human experience. In that sense,

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of course, literature does deal with human experience, but perhaps we have said enough about this without
mentioning it specifically.
The word ‘literature’ will always pose some problems not posed by words such as ‘furniture’ and ‘bird’. The
educational system has functioned as a kind of certifier of what literature is, and many speakers of English would
call whatever works they were taught in their high school English classes ‘literature’ without regard to any other
characteristics. Yet the word ‘literature’ is, after all, a word in the English language, and if we use it as we
communicate with each other, it should be possible to define it as a word. And current theories of semantics and of
word meaning suggest that definitions are best done, not through a rigid set of criteria which must be met by each
example, but through understanding a prototype to which other examples are more or less closely related.
References
Aitchison, Jean. 1987. Words in the mind: an introduction to the mental lexicon. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Blakemore, Diane. 1992. Understanding utterances. Oxford: Blackwell.
Coleman, Linda and Paul Kay. 1981. Prototype semantics: the English word lie. Language 57: 26-44.
Hernadi, Paul, ed. 1978. What is literature? Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hirsch, E.D. Jr. 1978. What isn’t literature? In Hernadi 1978, 24-34.
Hohulin, E. Lou. 1987. Concepts and categories: when is a tree not a tree? Notes on Translation 122: 1-25.
McFadden, George. 1978. ‘Literature’: a many-sided process. In Hernadi 1978, 49-61.
Magarrell, Elaine. 1989. Joy of cooking. Some time the cow kick your head. Light Year 1988-89.
Pater, Walter. 1869. The Renaissance: studies in art and poetry. Reprinted in William E Buckler, ed., Walter
Pater: Three major texts (The Renaissance, appreciations, and imaginary portraits). New York: New York
University Press, 1986.
Rombauer, Irma S. and Marion Rombauer Becker. 1975. Joy of cooking. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill.
Rosch, Eleanor. 1975. Cognitive representations of semantic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General. 104: 192-233.
Rosenblatt, Louise. 1978. The reader, the text, the poem: the transactional theory of the literary work. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press.
Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: communication and cognition. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Yeats, W. B., ed. 1936. The Oxford book of modern verse 1892-1935. New York: Oxford University Press.
Taylor, John R. 1989. Linguistic categorization: prototype in linguistic theory. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Wellek, René. 1978. What Is literature? In Hernadi 1978, 16-23.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe.
New York: Macmillan.



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Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 1

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 2

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 3

1.1. Second language acquisition

1.2. Second Language Learning

1.3. First language acquisition

SL Language stage Beginning stage

2. Language Acquisition and Language Learning

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 5

3. Critical Period Hypothesis

5. History of Second Language Theories and Approach

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 6

Behaviorist leaning theory

Why the L2 learner made errors:

5.2. Krashen’s monitor model (the 1970s)

The acquisition-Learning Hypothesis

The Monitor Hypothesis

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 7

The Natural Order Hypothesis

The Input Hypothesis

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 8

The Affective Filter Hypothesis

5.3. The rationalism/ cognitive approach (the 1960s-1970s):

5.4. Constructivism: (the 1980s-200)

Cognitive factors of second language acquisition Intelligence:

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 9

Language learning strategies:

6. Affective domain of second language acquisition

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 10

7. Sociocultural perspectives on second language acquisition

Schumann’s acculturation model

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 11

(Some parts are intentionally deleted by the module writer)

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 12

8. Key concepts in second language acquisition

A.​ ​Nature vs. nurture

B.​ ​Competence and performance

D.​ ​L1 interference as a learner strategy:

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 13

F. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 14

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 15

9. The Role of the First Language

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 16

The Effectiveness of a Task- Based Instruction program in

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 18

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 19

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 20

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 21

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 22

The Criterial Approach

The Prototype Approach

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 23

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 24

The Literary Prototype

Written Texts, Marked by Careful Use of Language, in a Literary Genre

Aesthetic Reading and the Author’s Intention

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 25

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 26

Weak Implicatures and Openness

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 27

Eng Maj 13 and 14 – The Teaching of Speaking and Literature 28

daptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services

A. Nature vs. nurture

B. Competence and performance

D. L1 interference as a learner strategy: