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Overview: educational and political context

Dick Hudson

Cambridge, October 2009

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Plan

1. The ideal education cycle

2. Why education needs linguistics

3. Why linguistics needs education

4. History: 1900-1960

5. History: 1960-1980

6. History: 1980-2009

7. Opportunities and challenges

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1.The ideal education cycle

infant

adult researcher

school teacher

Year 1-13

university researchknow-ledge

know-ledge

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2. Why education needs linguistics

• Descriptive content for:– L1 and literacy– FL– EAL

• Theoretical content for:– ideas to teach (language awareness)– language pedagogy

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3. Why linguistics needs education

• Students need good education

• Researchers need good education

• We need research in educational linguistics– Does education have any effect on language?– Does education affect grammaticality

judgements?

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4. History: 1900-1960

• HE: No research on language– except phonetics– No teaching of ‘language’

• except OE and philology

• Schools: Traditional grammar taught and tested– but not English grammar– ‘ [it is] impossible at the present juncture to teach

English grammar in the schools for the simple reason that no-one knows exactly what it is ’ (Board of Education 1921)

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GCE O-level English 1950

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5. History: 1960-1980

• GCE grammar test stops– Research shows grammar is useless?

• English teachers abandon grammar

• FL teachers follow suit– Research favours ‘communicative’ methods?

• But linguistics develops fast– particularly English grammar

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Committee for Linguistics in Education

• 1978 seminar: ‘Linguistics and the Teaching of Language in Schools’– created BAAL/LAGB Language Steering Committee

• 1980 this committee ran 2 seminars:– Linguistics as an examinable subject in schools

– The contribution of linguistics to the teaching of English as the mother tongue

• 1980 CLIE born– nearly 30 years ago, time to take stock

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6. History: 1980-2009

• The Tory backlash: the National Curriculum

• Favoured explicit Knowledge About Language (KAL)

• But English teachers had no training– So £25 million for LINC

• 1997: Labour took over

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Strategies

• 1999 The Literacy Strategy– current teaching was failing– required grammar at primary– extended since to secondary

• 2002 Languages … A strategy for England– current teaching of FL was failing– again required KAL, including grammar

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A-level English Language

• Linguistics for English teachers trained in literature– Born in early 1980s– A great success

• 2011: GCSE English language!

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But how much grammar do schools actually teach?

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NB Grammar KAL is worse.

0123456789

1986 1992 1994 2009

mean per person: PoS

mean per person:function

mean per person: all

errors per person FL students

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7. Opportunities and challenges

• Official policy requires KAL in schools– in English and FL

• Linguistics is viewed as important– but difficult and ‘dry’

• But most teachers lack subject knowledge– so most teachers don’t actually teach KAL

• What is to be done?