Orientation

One component of EFL needs to be orientation, a brief explanation of language acquisition theory. As noted earlier, our goal is to develop independent, or autonomous acquirers. Knowing how language is acquired will help ensure that this will occur. It is also important to tell students something about the philosophy underlying our practice because the approach outlined here is radically different from traditional approaches; we need to justify our pedagogy to students and in some cases to their parents.

Orientation can be done in the primary language fairly early in the EFL student’s language career and can be covered in more detail at advanced levels in English. S.Y. Lee (1998) included an introduction to language acquisition in an English course at the university level, with excellent results.

A Program

Instruction begins at around ages 8 to 10, when the child is old enough to take advantage of knowledge gained in the first language and young enough to profit from the advantages of beginning as a child.

The suggestions below take advantage of the L1 to accelerate second language acquisition, and at the same time encourage full development of the first language. This happens in two ways: First, EFL does not dominate the school day – what is proposed is not a full immersion program but is just one subject. There is plenty of time in school available for study in the primary language, building subject matter knowledge. promoting cognitive development, and developing literacy, including mastering the composing process. Second, use of the first language is built into the EFL program in places where it will be helpful to provide background knowledge.

The program aims to develop autonomous acquirers, those with enough competence to understand at least some authentic input as well as knowledge of language acquisition theory so they know what to do to improve and what to expect.

The focus of the program is literature and culture of the English-speaking world, which today is nearly the entire world. The "English-speaking world" does not include only countries in which English an official language, but includes all "Englishes."

The focus on literature and culture has several advantages. In addition to being educationally justified for its own sake, literature and culture include aspects of history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and philosophy.

In addition, this focus does not "compete" with subject matter teaching in the first language; in fact, it complements it, creating an opportunity for comparative studies. It also can create lifelong pleasure readers in English, ensuring continuing progress.

The program described below covers elementary school all the way to the university level.

Stage 1: Natural Approach and Graded Readers

Aural comprehensible input will be provided, as is done in Natural Approach (Krashen and Terrell, 1983), Total Physical Response (Asher, 2000), and Total Physical Response Storytelling (Ray and Seely, 1998) methodology. Activities can include games, dance, sports and projects. The best activities are those in which students are completely absorbed, in a sense forgetting that they are using another language (for suggestions, see Brown and Palmer, 1988).

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