Target Language Teaching and the ISS: why Robert Young was wrong about questioning genres

Abstract

In Critical Theory and Classroom Talk (1992), Robert Young argues for ‘Discursive’ teaching that realises Habermas's Ideal Speech Situation (ISS): for classrooms in which students are actively engaged in dialogue about the subject matter in a strong atmosphere of mutual trust. Other authors have endorsed this, explicitly or implicitly. However, there is a danger in such work of drawing conclusions about learning too readily (for example, from transcript data), and in ignoring both non‐verbal communication and interior dialogue, whereby learning might actually be taking place where students seem passive, or even confused. Successful ‘target language’ teaching, particularly in the early stages of foreign language acquisition (i.e., the practice of teachers using the foreign language all the time in the classroom), poses particular problems for Young's thesis. To the extent that the ISS is truly ideal, it is possible to realise that ideal in classrooms that have, at times, more of the characteristics of Young's ‘Guess What Teacher Thinks’ than of his ‘Discursive’ teaching.