Imagine an
alternative universe in which a large number of teachers, experts and textbooks
promoted a model of teaching which was untrue. Imagine that despite ample evidence
of the flaws of this approach, in the
form of books and journal articles, teachers and publishers just carried on
teaching it, -all the time taking students money for this
"education". Unfortunately, many
EFL teachers live in that world where reading skills are concerned. I'm hoping to write more about reading skills, but this entry will only deal with prediction.
Grabe makes two
important points about this model of reading.
The first is that it is very popular among "applied linguists"
and the second is that "it has been proven wrong in its predictions by
accumulating evidence for the past 20 years" (Grabe 2009:102). Grabe
hammers the point firmly home noting that this approach "has no empirical
validity and is problematic"(Grabe 2009:103) adding “One needs only to pick up a newspaper
in an unknown language to verify that background knowledge and prediction are
severely constrained by the need to know vocabulary and structure.” (1991: 380)
In 1996, Amos
Paran in an article called "reading in EFL facts and fictions" published
in the ELTJ bemoans the use of the "psycholinguistic model" of
Reading in EAP courses, noting that it "was never accepted as an important
model in the first place "(1996:29) and adds:
As a final point, it is important to stand
back and think how the Goodman and Smith view of reading, with all the
reservations LI reading researchers expressed towards it, has been able to hold
sway over L2 reading models for such a long time. (1995:33)
A point made perhaps more worrying by fact the
paper was first presented at IATEFL in 1992.
Despite this, I can still pick up textbooks, such as Oxford's "well
read" which include, in Swan's words, "the standard
battery of exercises designed to train students in ‘skimming’, ‘scanning’,
‘predicting’, ‘inferring’ and so forth, that one finds in textbook after
textbook" (2008:266)
Swan, beating Paran by 8 years, noted another problem with this model,
namely the assumption that non-native speakers lack the ability to
predict. With his usual finesse for
cutting through bullshit he writes:
One of the comprehension skills which we
now teach foreigners is that of predicting. It has been observed that native
listeners/readers make all sorts of predictions about the nature of what they
are about to hear or read, based on their knowledge of the subject, their
familiarity with the speaker or writer, and other relevant features. Armed with
this linguistic insight (and reluctant to believe that foreigners, too, can
predict), we 'train' students in 'predictive strategies'. (For instance, we ask
them to guess what is coming next and then let them see if they were right or
wrong.) But I would suggest that if a foreigner knows something about the
subject matter, and something about the speaker or writer, and if he knows
enough of the language, then the foreigner is just as likely as the native
speaker to predict what will be said. And if he predicts badly in a real-life
comprehension task (classroom tasks are different), it can only be for one of
two reasons. Either he lacks essential background knowledge (of the subject
matter or the interactional context), or his command of the language is not
good enough. In the one case he needs information, in the other he needs
language lessons. In neither case does it make sense to talk about having to
teach some kind of 'strategy'. (Swan 1985: 8)
Maybe it's time to stop wasting our
students' time?
references
British
Council (2012) Prediction. In teachingEnglish. Retrieved July 6 2012,
from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/knowledge-database/predictionGrabe, R (2009) reading in a second language Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Paran, A. (1996). Reading in EFL: Facts and fictions. ELT Journal, 50(1), 25-34
Grellet, F. (1990) Developing reading skills Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Harmer, J. (2007a) How to teach English Essex: Pearson Education Limited
Swan, M. (2008) Talking Sense about Learning Strategies RELC Journal 2008 39: 262 261-273
Swan, M (1985) a critical look
at the communicative approach 1 (1), ELT
Journal 39/1, pp.2-12