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The role of metalanguage
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Mon, 03/16/2009 - 12:19
As teachers / linguists, we should have quite a good grasp of the metalanguage and rules used to describe language, but how useful are these to our students?
Best
Nik
Tue, 03/17/2009 - 09:49
#2
Hi Marylou,
I like to keep metalanguage to a minimum when I'm teaching EAP. I think it's the technical langauge of my discipline that my students don't need - just like I'm not responsible for the technical langauge of their disciplines.
I read your post on pronouncing 'th' and I think 'back of the teeth' is so much clearer for a learner than 'alveolar ridge', which is a term he/she is unlikely ever to use outside of the classroom.
I think you can do most grammar in English with noun, noun phrase, verb, verb phrase, preposition, prepositional phrase, adjective, relative clause.
Am I being a bit provocative here?
Olwyn
Tue, 03/17/2009 - 17:51
#3
Hi Olwyn,
to begin with: what is EAP?
Yes, I agree, you don't need the term "alveolar ridge" when you want to teach how to do a <th> in English. Back of the teeth will do nicely.
But apart from that, I don't know whether I understood you correctly. What do you mean by this: " I think it's the technical langauge of my discipline that my students don't need - just like I'm not responsible for the technical langauge of their disciplines.". Aren't we talking about specialists teaching students of language, ie. don't we have a common discipline?
As for the usage of terms like "noun,noun phrase ... relative" I also agree with you, but only to a certain extent. If you always stick to the conventional terms you will never be able to bring in another perspective. The English language is not alwaxs an easy object of linguistic description. The conventional terms fail sometimes. and these cases are the most fascinating ones at least IMHO. E.g. what do you make of words like "several". Is it a determiner or an adjective? or where exactly is the borderline between these two classes? Perhaps you can find a better description and for every such attempt at creating a grammatical model you will need metalanguage. so this jargon has its credit because it will refer nicely to a concept which you would otherwise have to describe in a lengthy set of sentences. So jargon is just a tool for reference - not a means to show off in front of students.
So as the answer to your provocative question, I have a philosophical question in reply: Where would we get in our discipline without the use of metalanguage?
Regards,
Marylou
Tue, 03/17/2009 - 19:06
#4
Hi Marylou,
EAP stands for English for Academic Purposes and there is a forum for it below this one. EAP consists of the language and study competence needed by students who want to study their degree through the medium of English, possibly but not necessarily in an English-speaking country. So the students' disciplines can be medicine, petroleum engineering, law etc. Our discipline, linguistics, and its jargon - alveolar ridge - is not theirs. They only need English to study their discipline so in my view they don't need too much meta-language.
Words like several don't need to be labelled as adjectives or determiners for EAP students. What they need to know is how they function in a sentence - as a hedge to reduce the generalisability of the claim, for example compare:
Everyone believes Global Warming will kill the polar bears.
Several people believe Global Warming will kill the polar bears.
I would tend to show students such sentences side by side and get them to think about the difference rather than trying to label the word several.
Olwyn
Wed, 03/25/2009 - 00:50
#5
And on that note, it therefore depends on what the students needs are. I am involved in EAP too, so sometimes there is a need for the 'jargon'.
For instance, I'm involved in teacher training so there is a strong need for the 'jargon' since they will be ELT teachers upon graduation, or at least hope to be employed either as an ELT or go on to do post grad study in a related field for which the 'jargon' may actually benefit them (e.g. translation studies).
Yes, so I tend to think that many EAPers do not really need the 'jargon' as much as other EAPers do who may want to work in linguistics, applied linguistics or language related field e.g. ELT.
Otherwise I'm with you guys that students need (enjoy) a certain kind of metalanguage as you have highlighted Olwyn, but not necessarily the 'jargon'.
Wed, 03/18/2009 - 14:51
#6
Hi Olywn and Robert etc.
ok. Olywyn now that I know what EAP stands for I totally agree with you and Robert and your position of working with as little metalanguage as possible. The students just don't need it.
so the argument is settled, isn't it?
Marylou
Wed, 03/18/2009 - 14:52
#7
P.S.
.....settled, unless Nik can bring in some more of his provocative ideas....
Marylou
Wed, 03/18/2009 - 22:03
#8
Does it have to be Nik or can I have a go? :-)
It seems to me that the technical terminology of any specialist field is needed because the practitioners in that field need to define things at a level that people outside that field do not need. The reason that it becomes a crossover issue in English teaching (of any kind) is because the medium of teaching is also the subject. That is presumably why the term "metalanguage" itself has been coined, to describe language about language. As such, I suspect that there is a need to use this terminology in teaching where it is felt to be necessary that the students also understand the fine difference that is being defined
So my feeling is that metalanguage may be useful and even necessary. In the same way that I am perfectly happy to use L1 where I can to convey something in a few seconds that might otherwise take 20 minutes in L2, I would be quite happy to use metalanguage to convey meaning that would otherwise be very difficult to do without using it.
Maybe not very provocative after all?
Kevin
Thu, 03/19/2009 - 17:17
#9
Hi Kevin,
glad to see that more people have found their way to the applied linguistics forum. At the stage when I was posting my last comment, Olwyn, Robert and me were the only three who had taken up the hot potato question Nik had launched. All the better if the insider thing has been opened.
BTW I totally agree with what you said. - even with your not being provocative at all - at least IMHO
Bye,
Marylou
Thu, 03/19/2009 - 19:27
#10
Dear Marylou,
Kevin is being too modest here, for really he is a multitasking genius as he is also very active on the ELT Management forum, of which he is an OM, not to speak of all sorts of other ones.
Diana
Thu, 03/19/2009 - 21:46
#11
You're too kind <blush>
Don't worry, once the traffic gets more intense, I shall withdraw to my own forum and a couple of others. It can get very busy later on.
Kevin
Thu, 03/19/2009 - 19:31
#12
Hi Marylou and Kevin,
I agree it's nice to see more people and more ideas in the discussion.
I guess I was trying to be provocative in my response about metalanguage because actually I think that there are some students who know it and really like using it - they show me up (specially in the area of pronunciation jargon) as being a person who used to know it but forgot most of it :-)
This is OK though. I like to get to a sitaution where some students in my class know more than I do and can explain it to others who are interested. This normally happens really soon when we are discussing their specialist degree subjects of course. The whole situation then becomes much more real as if we are at a conference exchanging ideas - just as we are now.
Olwyn
Sat, 03/21/2009 - 13:41
#13
Hi Olwyn,
nice to see that our discussion continues...
Yes, I agree using jargon is a thing students like. But I'm not quite sure whether you mean that your students know, use and explain to others the metalinguage of (applied) linguistics or whether they use the jargon of their own discipline. As far as I remember English in your case is the teaching medium but not the subject.
So perhaps I could do with some sort of clarification there what exactly your position is.
I just want to say that it's really fun to talk to you guys out there and I really appreciate reading from you all (Diana, Kevin, Olwyn)!
Bye,
Marylou
Bye
Mon, 03/23/2009 - 11:18
#14
Well, perhaps I'll jump in here and be a bit provocative. One reason people/groups have their own codes is to make themselves appear increasingly knowledgeable and to make other 'outsiders' feel less so. After all, if you don't know the vocab you can't really argue against the system. So I would argue that by sharing the metalanguage we are enabling the learners to argue the toss and empowering them to take part in the teaching/learning process.
Andy
Mon, 03/23/2009 - 21:41
#15
Hi Andy,
I agree that sometimes 'insider' codes can make outsiders feel excluded but I think the other side of that coin is that jargon makes it easier for experts in a field to talk to each other. It's a kind of shorthand that they don't have to explain because everyone in the field is sufficiently knowledgeable about the background not to need the explanation.
My learners in EAP are going into disciplines such as petroleum engineering, robotics, construction management, but not into education or linguistics. Giving them metalanguage in my discipline won't empower them to participate in their disciplines.
I also think it is possible to set up opportunities to empower students in other ways, e.g. by sharing decisions with them about what to study, what topics to write about, when to be tested etc.
Olwyn
Wed, 03/25/2009 - 11:41
#16
That's all true, Olwyn. But how can they be independent learners if they don't know what to look up? Here's an example. On my public site I had a query from a native English speaker asking which was correct:
The person who you are seeking help from OR The person from whom you are seeking help
I answered telling them that the 'end sentence with preposition rule' was a bit of a myth borrowed from Latin, and he could find more examples on the internet. He replied:
"I'm afraid that the expression "ending a sentence with a preposition" was that which I wanted to search for but was unfamiliar with the term. Being a comprehensive school student, grammar and Latin were not on the syllabus."
It's not the content, rather the enabling.
Fri, 03/27/2009 - 02:36
#17
Hi Olwyn
What you've said is what I do and how I 'think'. I teach EAPers whose work destinations are ELT, mostly, so I make judgements about which and what types of 'jargon' to share based on work destinations.
If one of my students was heading for 'robotics', however, might share some of the 'jargon'.
But you're absolutely 'right', I think, about 'empowering' students. And 'empowerment' is also part of increasing learner autonomy.
I get where Andy is coming from but I can't see the 'logic' in sharing the 'jargon' of a particular linguistics discipline with someone who is heading for mechanical enginering or accounting. How does knowing about it 'empower' that particular student to take more control of their learning? Knowing about it 'empowers' the teacher/instructor/facilitator to help the learner/student learn something necessary or important without having to tell the student exactly what they're doing. Unless it was a particular strategy which maybe useful to the student some how? But even then the teacher would/should be capable of 'paraphrasing' it to make it easier for the student without having to say where it came from, i.e. neuroscience, computational linguistics. Information overload? I do not believe it is about creating 'a level playing field' in this context. What's there to argue about if the learner/student gets were they want to go without having to know exactly how they got there? I do not believe students are such pendants. Occasionally you might meet someone like that.
Teaching is all about speeding up the process of acquisition not slowing it down, right?
robert
Mon, 05/04/2009 - 11:08
#18
An interesting discussion. Personally I think the importance should lie in helping the student achieve their goals first and foremost, as opposed to any set curricula. If the student wants a degree of fluency then they should aim for that. If they want to understand the linguistics involved behind that process, then that's a different matter.
Regards,
Master Shu
Hi Nik,
extremely good question. Yes, indeed during my time as a linguistics assistant professor at Würzburg university I sometimes felt that being able to juggle all the linguistic terminology was 90% of all the brain work involved. It sounds so high-brow and really posh to be able to differentiate between things like stratum - substratum- superstratum or to talk of phonologically conditioned vs morphologically conditioned allomorphs. Sometimes it is possible to express the whole concept in much more basic and everyday language. But very often it isn't. And it's then that you need the metalanguage and that you need to teach it to others i.e. students so that they can start to see concepts where there was just a blurred vision before. In most of these cases the bit of metalanguage stands for a more complex kind of idea and then being able to refer to this complex idea by using the metalanguage bit as a "name" for it, will ease discussion. (Discussion can of course start getting tricky againg when you have not checked beforehand that everybody's usage of the metalanguage bit in question follows the convention, e.g. the term "phoneme" as used in the Prague school).
So I'm afraid that we cannot do without the metalanguage.
Can't wait to hear what you out there think about this.
Bye,
Marylou