Making the minutes count in L2 teaching

Abstract

Many educational institutions offer second- or foreign-language (L2) programmes that give students many more hours of contact with the target language than is typical of foreign-language instruction in schools around the world. This article compares some of the instructional approaches developed for both second- and foreign-language learners at the primary and secondary school levels. The approaches are compared in terms of several characteristics, including goals and outcomes. The review suggests that, even when more time is available, it is important to provide learning opportunities that focus on both meaningful language use and the vocabulary and structure of the language itself. In addition, the research shows that supporting students’ knowledge of their first language (L1) can contribute to their long-term academic and L2 success.

Keywords:

• bilingual education
• CBLT
• ESL
• explicit instruction
• foreign language pedagogy
• two-way immersion

Acknowledgements

First, I wish to thank Joanna White and Sarah Kennedy, who honoured me by inviting me to present the Eric Hawkins lecture at the 2012 meeting of the Association for Language Awareness. They also helped me shape the content of that presentation for this article. Three anonymous reviewers used their expertise to offer numerous suggestions for improving the written version of the presentation, and I am grateful for their help.

Notes

1. The terms ‘foreign language’ and ‘second language’ are often used to distinguish between the classroom-learning environments of students who live in communities where the language being taught is rarely heard outside the classroom (foreign language) and those who live in communities where the language being learned at school is also widely spoken outside the classroom (second language). In this article, I will use these terms to focus on the different contexts for learning. However, the short form of second language (L2) will be used to cover both types of learning environments.

2. Stern (1985) used the term drip feed to describe language courses that expose students to instruction that could be measured in minutes per day, usually spread over many years of schooling. Full flow instruction is more compact or intensive, providing foreign language exposure more intensively – for hours rather than minutes per day. Most such approaches offer more total time for instruction; others simply ‘compact’ the amount of time rather than spreading it thinly over longer periods. More detailed descriptions of several full flow approaches appear later in this article.

3. In the context of this article, the term ‘majority language’ refers to the language that is spoken by the majority of the members of a community and which is also a language that has prestige and status as the language of education and government. The term ‘minority language’ will be used to refer to a language that is spoken by fewer people in a community and is often seen as having lower prestige than the majority language.

4. A reviewer pointed out that many readers would not be familiar with the distribution of language populations in Canada. While Canada is an officially bilingual country, French and English are not spoken equally across the country. In 8 of the 10 provinces, English is spoken by nearly everyone, whether as a first or second language. In the province of New Brunswick, about half the population speak French as their first language, and schools provide education in either French or English according to parents’ choice. In Quebec, approximately 80% of the population have French as the first language and, with the exception of children whose parents were educated in English in Canada, all students must attend French-language primary and secondary schools. Throughout Canada, nearly all students are taught the ‘other’ official language as their L2, even though they may have little occasion to use it outside of school.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patsy M. Lightbown

Patsy Martin Lightbown is Distinguished Professor Emeritus (applied linguistics) at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Her research has focused on the learning and teaching of second and foreign languages in the classroom, especially the complementary contributions of communicative and form-focused activities. With Nina Spada, she co-authored How Languages are Learned (Oxford University Press), an introduction to second-language-acquisition research for teachers that is now in its fourth edition.