John Klapper

Taking communication to task? A critical review of recent trends in language teaching

Work in the area of task-based language instruction has called into question certain central tenets of communicative language teaching. This article reviews recent research into task-based pedagogy and reflects on its implications for the foreign language classroom. Following a review of perceived weaknesses in the so-called communicative approach, the article examines the task-based critique of the traditional presentation-practice-production lesson paradigm and describes an alternative framework based around classroom tasks. A task-based approach is shown to accord better with what we know about second language acquisition than conventional ‘synthetic’ language syllabuses. However, attention is also drawn to a number of concerns with the approach as currently propounded, in particular its neglect of language learning as a cognitive process of skill acquisition. The article concludes by suggesting that tasks in the communicative classroom should be linked to a more consistent focus on form and to more guided practice than is currently envisaged by ‘strong’ versions of task-based teaching.

Language Learning at School and University: The Great Grammar Debate Continues (II).

The second part of this article considers a number of theoretical and practical issues in language teaching which could help to bridge the current methodological divide and proposes a number of reforms to the way languages are currently taught in secondary schools and HE.

Analysing and evaluating the linguistic benefit of residence abroad for UK foreign language students

This paper reports on a longitudinal study designed to assess the progress made by UK foreign language undergraduate students during the residence abroad (RA) component of their degree. The article first of all places the study within the international research context, and then describes the data collation procedures and methodology employed. It reports findings concerning proficiency gains and the predictive validity of factors such as gender, IQ, length of stay, prior levels of achievement and previous methodological exposure. The findings confirm significant linguistic gains in general for RA. They also appear to show that individuals vary greatly in their rates of progress during RA on holistic measures of proficiency but that previous methodological exposure is a key factor in determining gains on discrete measures. There is also evidence that longer stays do not necessarily lead to greater proportionate proficiency gains. Findings concerning progress, prediction of progress and individual performance variation are compared and contrasted with those of American and other British studies.

University residence abroad for foreign language students: analysing the linguistic benefits

This paper reviews research to date into the foreign language (FL) gains made by the large number of FL students from the UK who undertake a period of residence abroad (RA) as a component of their degree. It examines in detail the efficacy of the most common form of RA undertaken by UK students, namely the study year at a foreign university (URA). It highlights the growing body of evidence for strong general linguistic gains but also draws attention to highly differentiated progress rates. The authors then draw on quantitative data from their own longitudinal study of the progress of a cohort of students from a British university which replicates these findings of substantial general progress and large differences in individual gains. After considering a variety of potential reasons for these individual differences, they propose two hitherto unreported explanations based on qualitative data from the study: differing levels of emotional intelligence and the arbitrary nature of the URA experience for FL students. The paper concludes by discussing whether these two explanations would be helpful or harmful to the case for the continuation of URA in its present form.

Marks, get set, go: an evaluation of entry levels and progress rates on a university foreign language programme

This paper highlights the problem of falling recruitment to foreign language (FL) degrees in higher education, outlining some of the recent changes in secondary FL education which have contributed in part to this situation. It draws attention to the lack of research into the impact that the fall in numbers of students taking a foreign language A level is having on the quality of the intake onto HE foreign languages courses. It reviews the findings and conclusions of the only major study in this area and then presents the results of a new longitudinal study of FL learning at a major UK university. The findings challenge the prevalent view that A level foreign languages are becoming the preserve of the academically elite and raise questions about the type of skills rewarded at foreign language A level. The study confirms previous research findings relating to poor progression rates in university FL learning, but questions the assumption that poor tuition is the root cause of this malaise.

Rediscovering the "Other Germany": A New Edition of the Works of Stefan Andres

Stefan Andres (1906–1970) was born the son of a miller in the Mosel region of Germany and, following an aborted attempt to join the Catholic priesthood, studied German, art history and philosophy in Cologne, Jena and Berlin. Despite early successes with strongly autobiographical novels and the award of an Abraham Lincoln scholarship which enabled him to spend time writing in the south of Italy, an encounter which was to have long-lasting consequences, he found it difficult to establish himself in Nazi Germany. Following the loss of his job with the Cologne radio station in 1935 owing to his inability to produce the required certificate of racial purity for his “half Jewish” wife Dorothee, the subsequent two years were spent in a state of constant fear of arrest. The famous novella El Greco malt den Grosinquisitor, with its study of responses to tyranny was published in 1936, and in 1937 the family finally managed to secure permission to leave Germany for the isolated southern Italian coastal of Positano which was to become the family refuge until 1950. Despite enormous physical hardship and the tragic death of a young daughter through illness, the period of “voluntary semi exile” (Wagener 227) and quasi-“inner emigration” proved to be highly productive and decisive for the writer’s development. In the middle of work on his large-scale allegorical reckoning with the Third Reich, Die Sintflut, Andres produced his second “master novella”, Wir sind Utopia as well as numerous short prose works, many of them historical texts with veiled oppositional content which were published in newspapers in Nazi Germany.

Ante- and Postdiluvian Reflections of an "Inner Emigrant": Stefan Andres's Trilogy Die Sintflut (1949-1959/2007)

Through this lament for the idea of the “other Germany,” written on 9 May 1945, the day of Germany’s capitulation, the writer Stefan Andres (1906–1970) identifies himself with his fellow Germans, in particular those “inner emigrant” writers, artists, and journalists who had remained in Nazi Germany but had not collaborated with the regime and had endeavoured, each in their own way, to maintain their artistic and moral integrity. Andres had had to flee Germany in 1937 because of his “half-Jewish” wife and spent thirteen years in “selbst-

Researching the Benefits of Residence Abroad for Students of Modern Foreign Languages

This chapter highlights the growing body of international research into the benefits of residence abroad for foreign language students, surveying studies from the past 35 years originating in both the U.S.A. and the U.K. It examines some of the problematic issues confronting researchers in this area and shows how these issues have contributed to a paucity of studies in the area and led to a diversity in research design. It reports on longitudinal study, the first of its kind in the U.K., which examined the linguistic benefits of residence abroad for a cohort of modern language students from a leading university. This 4-year study used repeated measures proficiency testing, involving a C-test, a grammar test and a range of qualitative measures, to chart the progress made by students on 6- and 12-month study placements in Germany. Findings confirm substantial proficiency gains on both of the main measures but fail to confirm gender and length of residence abroad as predictors of progress. Results also reveal strong differential individual performance during residence abroad. The chapter concludes with recommendations for future research aimed at exploring this key finding further.