1. Introduction

Can teachers teach, and learners learn, more efficiently?

There are many ways to learn a second language. Learners have different learning styles, learn in

different contexts and for a variety of purposes, which means that it would be naive to argue for one

particular methodology or approach to teaching and learning. What we can consider, however, is

how efficient that learning is. Today’s adult learners are probably more businesslike than ever

before and are looking for an approach which is not only fast but efficient. They need to feel that

they are learning in the most direct way possible and that they are not wasting time on unnecessary

tasks or activities. One way of approaching this is to look at aspects of our teaching which are not as

successful as we would like them to be and to consider ways of improving them.

From my own experience as both teacher and learner, I believe that there are two areas which

merit consideration:

1. Why do second language learners often produce possible language as opposed to actual

language? Why do they often achieve native-like fluency but not native-like selection?

2. Why doesn’t consciously produced language automatically become spontaneously produced

language?

The first question highlights the fact that many second language learners communicate effectively

in a second language but often using language which is different to that of a native speaker. The

second question captures the frustration many teachers feel when language which has been

presented and practised in the classroom fails to appear when students carry out a free production

task designed to elicit that language. In other words, language which is produced consciously at the

practice stage does not appear when the learner is asked to speak spontaneously.

The first issue focuses on the type of language the learner produces and relates to the structure of

language itself. The second involves the mechanics of learning, and in particular the real-time

production of language. If we can understand why these issues arise we can hopefully develop

approaches and strategies to address them and in the process improve the efficiency of teaching and

learning. The approach and materials outlined in this book represent an attempt to do this.

ELT and second language learning in general are still very much influenced by Chomsky, with

approaches to teaching and learning dominated by a slot and filler model based on the separation of

grammar and vocabulary. The attraction of this model lies in the high level of generalisability that

it promises - enabling the learner to produce an infinite number of new sentences from a small set of

grammar rules. I no longer think that this model accurately reflects the nature of language, or what

actually happens when we produce language in real time. Sinclair and Mauranen (2006) point out

that simplicity and elegance in a model may not actually match what the brain does. It appears that

much of the language we produce is idiomatic in nature and, secondly, that we use mainly memory-

based processing rather than rule-based processing when we understand and produce language in

real time.

One obvious implication of the substantial idiomatic content of language is that the level of

generalisability possible in language learning is far lower than we may assume. It also means that

there is much more language to learn than we think there is. It may be time for teachers and learners

to give up the comfort of thinking that once they know a small set of general grammar rules and

build up a vocabulary of single words, they will be able to understand, say and write lots of things

in another language. The reality is that the number of items to learn, memorise, and automate is

massive, and that this demands a great deal of time and practice. Language learning is neither

intellectually demanding nor glamorous. There are no sudden, giant leaps forward - it’s a long,

steady and perhaps rather tedious process, and it is essential that teachers and learners acknowledge

and accept this right from the start.

Over the last decade I have attempted to tackle the issue of actual versus possible language by

adopting strategies based on a lexical approach and through the development of dedicated

collocation practice materials. Although these go some way towards helping the learner to produce

natural English expressions, I found that unless I provided extensive consolidation activities, only a

small percentage of this English transferred to my students’ free speech. It became increasingly

clear to me that I needed a better understanding of what is involved in producing language in real

time, or how we ‘language’. In order to gain further insight into this, I adopted a ‘doctor-takes-his-

own-medicine’ approach and decided to learn Spanish. Rather than beginning with general grammar

rules and single vocabulary items, I concentrated on learning meaningful chunks of language. At the

same time I kept notes on what kinds of exercises and practice activities seemed useful in helping

me to understand and produce language in real time.

What follows are the ideas that have developed out of this endeavour. The book represents a

reflection on my teaching career - and on how I think I could do things better now! For example, I

will propose making a number of changes to the structure of teaching materials. The suggested

outline for a coursebook breaks with the template that has come to dominate ELT textbooks since

the introduction of the Headway series in the 1980s, and perhaps my most radical suggestion is that

translations of all texts in the textbook should be made available online to the learner - in all

languages. I will also propose a much simpler lesson structure, featuring a narrower range of

activities than in many current materials. With an ever-expanding body of learning material

available from publishers and online, I believe the key to effective second language learning is not

to give learners more material, but rather to encourage richer, more direct interaction with it.

I call the approach which has emerged ‘messaging, chunking, and texting’. I believe its attraction

lies in the fact that it both simplifies and streamlines the process of teaching and learning. Looking

back at the coursebooks I have used over the years, two titles stand out as embodying this approach.

Meanings into Words (1983) reflects the essence of what it is to use a language, while Streamline

English (1980) suggests learning materials which are efficient, practical and easy to follow for both

teacher and learner. The word ‘streamline’ is defined in the Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary as ‘to

make an organisation or process simpler and more effective’, to which the Cambridge Advanced

Learner’s Dictionary adds ‘to make an organisation or process more efficient by removing

unnecessary parts of it.’ The expressions in bold neatly sum up the driving force behind the

approach and materials outlined in this book.

Messaging and chunking

When I go on holiday to a foreign country, I don’t take a grammar book with me, I opt for a

phrasebook with a word list at the back. This choice embodies what I think is the most efficient

approach to the teaching and learning of a second language. Abroad, I need to communicate. In

modern terminology, I need to be able to send and receive messages.

What do I mean by a message? The following sentence from the poem Jabberwocky in Lewis

Carroll’s book Alice in Wonderland has grammatical form but no content:

All mimsy were the borogoves.

Although the syntax is familiar, we do not know what the words ‘mimsy’ and ‘borogoves’ mean -

they are nonsense words. In contrast, the phrase ‘the next train to Edinburgh’ has recognisable

content but feels incomplete in that it is not clear what the speaker aims to express. However, the

utterance ‘When is the next train to Edinburgh?’ does feel complete. We know exactly what the

speaker hopes to achieve in uttering it, and this is what I will mean by ‘a message’. It has form,

content and a commonly recognised function.

Once a message is selected for learning, it is then translated so that the learner understands what

it means. This reflects the approach taken in the standard holiday phrasebook. Once the meaning of

the message is established, we follow a simple methodology to guide learning. We begin by

dividing the message into parts, which are then changed to create similar but new messages:

When is the next train to Glasgow.

When is the last train to Edinburgh.

When is the next bus to Edinburgh.

Modifying a message in this way will be called chunking. The term chunk is used to reflect the fact

that the parts we divide messages into are generally phrases rather than single words:

I’d like a return ticket, please

I’d like an off-peak return, please

I’d like an off-peak return to London, please

In chunking messages, learning follows what Wray (2008) calls a Needs Only Analysis approach.

According to this view, there is no immediate need to break down a multi-word chunk into all its

constituent parts provided we understand what it means as a whole. In the example above, ‘I’d like’

is understood as a single semantic unit with a one-to-one match between meaning and form. There

is no immediate need to break down and explain the modal structure would + verb if the learner is

only interested in the variation of the object in the message. To a beginner whose first language is

Spanish it is enough to know that ‘I’d like’ can be used for ‘quisiera’. This leads to the principle that

the internal construction of a chunk should only be analysed when the learner needs to vary the

structure in some way to create new messages. For example, at a later stage our Spanish beginner

might want to say ‘We’d like day return tickets’, ‘They’d like day return tickets.’ And this variation

is now one of learning grammar rather than new vocabulary. In a message approach, grammar and

vocabulary serve the message and not the other way round.

This kind of activity has always been used in language learning and teaching, especially at lower

levels. However, I am suggesting that we place this process at the heart of all language learning

programmes, at all levels.