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1. The vocational side of studies of Contemporary English
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1. The vocational side of studies of Contemporary English


In recent years the number of people learning English and using English for various purposes, but not speaking it as their mother tongue, has grown to an astronomical size. Estimates vary around the figure of two hundred million overseas users of English, with great diversity of quantity, quality and motives in then use of the language. By far the most urgent set of problems, naturally, relates to the teaching of English to this vast population; but to forestall the hasty conclusion that the function of Contemporary English is training overseas teachers of English, it is necessary to make two points; first, these are by no means the only problems; and second, the contribution lies elsewhere than in the area of classroom methods, education theory and normal pedagogical training.

Professor P.D.Strevens considers that the main contribution in Britain is of three kinds: first, giving academic and professional training to university and training-college staff from the countries concerned so that they can raise the standards of their own institutions when they return home; second, preparing British graduates as university staff and trainers of teacher-trainers;, and third, providing the best possible academic content for these courses of professional training and their overseas counterparts. It is the third of these sub-divisions that is the most relevant to their own interests in Contemporary English at Leeds.

As this point we approach a delicate question of doctrine in the matter of teaching foreign languages. It will be obvious that the problems of English as a foreign language are fundamentally similar to those of French as a foreign language, or Russian, or Chinese, and until comparatively recently the attitudes and techniques used by British teachers going abroad to teach English were similar to, and even based upon, the older, more conventional attitudes towards teaching foreign languages in this country which were current before the War. Similar methods used to be current in the United States, until America reached a point of crisis, during the War. They were faced with a sudden need to teach practical language ability in English and in several other languages to immigrants and to soldiers; they decided that conventional methods were not efficient or effective, enough for the purpose, and so they cast around for other means.

Out of this operation, reinforced by a traumatic reaction to the launching of the first Russian satellite, there emerged in the United States an attitude towards language teachers which said, approximately, 'Make them good structural linguists and the problem will be solved'. This point of view was widely held for a number of years. In Britain, on the other hand, at roughly the same period, the converse doctrine held sway: 'Make them good teachers, and the problem will be solved'. It is now clear to most people that neither of these exclusive attitudes is the best solution. It turned out, on the American side, that only those linguists who were also good teachers could make really effective use of the sophisticated linguistic materials they were given to teach with; while on the British side, even the best classroom teachers were handicapped by the rudimentary linguistics which underlay much of the teaching material used. In the nineteen-sixties, both attitudes have been modified. Some American institutions are increasing the methodology component of their courses, while some British professional training courses are illuminating their admirable methodology with a sound linguistic background. The point of this sketchy and compressed summary of recent history in teaching English is that it shows the genesis of our own outlook at Leeds, which is that there must be a marriage of the two components.

In other words, the teaching of English as a foreign language has become a joint activity, containing on the one hand both education and methodology (which are most properly provided, as at Leeds, by the specialists in Education), and on the other hand a sound background of linguistic thought and up-to-date descriptions of the present-day language (which are properly provided by the specialists in language and in English). There may well be some overlap in functions: this is largely a question of the number of specialist staff that any given institution can afford; but the principle is clear.

The particular projects which Leeds is building in this domain and to which Contemporary English contributes are of three main kinds. First, there are the professional qualifications which teachers of English overseas can take, and which involve collaboration between the School of English, the Department of Education and the Institute of Education.

Then there are longer-term proposals for links with university centres overseas, in America, Africa, and Asia. These links, when they can be achieved, will enable the countries which have problems of this kind to benefit in their own vocational programmes from the fruits of the academic side of Contemporary English at Leeds. In addition, they should give practical expression to the ideal (much talked-of but rarely achieved) of collaboration in this field between Britain and America.

The third kind of project concerns the development of mass media and technical aids for teaching purposes. Just as stylistics is an area in the academic programme where Contemporary English overlaps with another branch of English studies, to their mutual enrichment, so also there is an area in the vocational programme where Contemporary English overlaps with the pedagogical arts. It is no accident that specialists in Contemporary English should everywhere be called upon to assist in the exploitation of television, radio, language laboratories, audio-visual aids, and teaching machines, for the purposes of teaching English. It is simply a reflection of the fact that these -devices by themselves, effective though they may be in principle, are of little use unless they are programmed by specialists in language and in English.

We are called in, then, by those who teach English as a foreign language, to provide the theoretical basis and the best possible description of English, as part of the total language-teaching job. But the profession of teaching English as a foreign language is only one particular case of the general category of teaching foreign languages; and to the extent that teaching English as a foreign language can be shown to have improved in effectiveness by the marriage of our theory and description with the best possible teaching methods and techniques, to that extent we are likely to arouse the interest of those who teach foreign languages other than English.

There is at present in Britain a wave of interest in the teaching of foreign languages in the primary schools. New social and political pressures make it virtually certain that before long some European languages will be taught to all children, and from an early age, instead of only to a small proportion of children, late in their school career, as at present. But to many teachers this is a dangerous experiment: 'Who knows', many of them ask, 'whether young children can learn languages, without suffering psycho­logical harm'? The answer is that some of those who teach English as a foreign language know, because they have been doing it for years in Africa and elsewhere.

There is yet a further extension of these collaborations. Many of those who teach English language in schools in Britain are unhappy about the aims and syllabuses of their profession, and about the text-books they have to use. It is a remarkable fact that a number of text-books designed to describe the present-day English language to foreign learners have suddenly begun to sell in quantity at home. Two trends seem to be at work, as far as one can judge: first, many teachers are seeking descriptions of English that relate to the way it is actually used, in speech and writing, today; and there are few works that meet this specification. And second, many teachers want to present a description that rests on a coherent framework of theory and description. Here I am back at my starting-place, the academic study of the pre­sent-day language; but the point I am making, is that Contemporary English can contribute to the teaching of English as a foreign language, to the teaching of foreign languages in general, and to the teaching of English in Britain.