7.1 Introduction
7.1.1 Reviewing Chronological Keyword Data for ACTIVITY
ACTIVITY appears as the fourth item in order of disproportionate frequency in the main, Rossner<>Old Lee keyword list (log-likelihood score 679.93). Use of the word increases gradually over the period under investigation, and it is already a key item, in 20th position (log-likelihood score of 103.96), in the (extended) New Lee<>Old Lee table of results. However, like COMMUNICATIVE, ACTIVITY is also prominent in the Rossner<> New Lee list (in fifth position, log-likelihood score 300.29). Its ‘keyness history’ also therefore resembles COMMUNICATIVE in that while it gains a modicum of importance in the New Lee period, in the Rossner texts it becomes very frequently used indeed. Since it is calculated as key, even when compared against a corpus in which it is already a key item, ACTIVITY must be considered a crucial term in the Rossner texts.
The negative keyword data for the three periods is particularly revealing in the case of ACTIVITY. It seems likely that it serves to “replace” disappearing terms such as DRILL, the sixth item (log-likelihood 207.57) in the Old Lee<> New Lee list. ‘Drills’ are described in some New Lee texts, as we shall see, in a way that makes the term a synonym of ‘activity’. They are also characterised as being types of classroom activities (as, for example, by James and Lloyd Mullen, below). This is a tendency which declines over the period represented by the corpus. It represents part of the process, explained below, by which ACTIVITY sheds early, “general” senses and emerges to become a more professional and technical term.
7.1.2 Issues of Meaning and Polysemy
The issue of polysemy is complex in the case of ACTIVITY, and requires careful attention. In both New Lee and Rossner texts, it conveys several very different
meanings. The word is often used —as in everyday discourse—‘anaphorically’, serving as a substitute for another (usually earlier) term, usually to avoid clumsy repetition. In these cases the reference needs to be traced back, often to an earlier sentence or paragraph, to locate its meaning. When, for example, P. V. A. Adkins states that ‘[t]here are those who maintain, wrongly in our view, that the two activities have little in common’ (‘English For, not English As’ (1981 35/4 216—219)) the ‘two activities’ being referred to are ‘teaching English as a 'foreign' language and teaching it as a 'second' language’ (p. 216).
Despite the complication that anaphoric use introduces, a number of reasonably distinctive meanings for ACTIVITY can be identified in the New Lee and Rossner texts. References to ‘external’ activities, unrelated to teacher or student behaviour in language learning, are quite common. In ‘Teaching Numbers’ (1974 28/3 245—246), for example, David Dungworth explains that numbers play an integral part in such ‘everyday activities as shopping, travelling, telling the time […] and talking about one's age and family’ (p. 245). In many other instances ‘activity’ is used, as an uncountable noun, to describe behaviour that is occurring in a classroom at a particular time. This is the case in A. F. Deyes’ (‘Speech Activity in the Language Classroom’ (1974 28/3 222—226)) comment that ‘total student speech activity was alarmingly small’ (p. 223) in the lessons he investigated. It is also quite frequently used as a technical, specialist term, often describing some concept in academic disciplines external to language teaching. In Leo van Lier’s ‘Analysing Interaction in Second Language Classrooms’ (1984 38/3 160—169), for instance, the author discusses ‘activity frames’, a specialist term within the tradition of applied linguistics tradition of discourse analysis, that developed from Sinclair and Coultard’s
classifications of patterns of classroom interaction.
ACTIVITY is, though, still most often used to describe procedures that facilitate language learning in the classroom. This use is often in fact explicitly “marked” by its inclusion in the expression ‘classroom activity’10. Collocation and cluster data
10
indicate that this sense of the term is stable over the New Lee and Rossner periods, with ‘classroom activities’ being referred to almost as equally as extensively in both corpora. ‘Activities’ is the top collocate in the New Lee list, while ‘activity’ is the ‘second’. ‘Classroom activity’ and ‘classroom activities’ are also important clusters in each. In the New Lee corpus the former appears 15 times, the latter 24 times. In Rossner texts the singular form appears 25 times; the plural does not appear at all. It cannot be said, however, that what actually constitutes a legitimate ‘activity’ remains constant over the period of investigation. Particularly in earlier, New Lee period texts it is frequently used in a very general way to include such procedures as formal drills and teacher-led exercises. In ‘English as She is Heard': Aural Difficulties Experienced by Foreign Learners’ (1973 28/1 15—22), for example, Kenneth James and Lloyd Mullen provide a list of ‘typical classroom activities’ that includes
grammatical drills, reading aloud and dictation (p. 16). In ‘Some Basic Principles of Teacher Training’ (1974 29/1 19 –22) Peter Strevens uses the word in a similarly broad sense. Reflecting the “structural” approach to language teaching then prominent, he portrays ‘[t]eaching techniques and classroom activities’ as procedures in which structural elements are presented as ‘teachable items’. The purpose of the activities he describes is to present language points so that ‘their significance is grasped and the learner is enabled to use them with accuracy and ease’ (p.19).
7.2 ACTIVITY in New Lee Texts
7.2.1 Games and Activities
Throughout the New Lee period, the terms ‘game’ and activity’ are frequently linked. Evidence for this association in the collocation data is not perhaps as prevalent as intuition might expect; ‘games’ (plural only) appears, in 9th position . However, a number of factors, gleaned from careful reading of the wider passages and texts in which the terms appear, provide support for this linkage.
From a modern practitioner’s perspective, the descriptions given of New Lee period ‘games’ are often identifiable as ‘activities’ in the contemporary sense, in that they conform to later descriptions of simulations, information gaps, etc frequently referred to as such by the modern teacher. They are also often described, in considerable detail and with concern for their successful implementation, in a manner that anticipates the description of activities given by many Rossner period writers (striking parallels can be found between articles described here and
‘Authentic Listening Activities’ (1981 36/1 37—47), discussed in the Rossner section). These discussions concerning ‘games’ might therefore be seen as a kind of precursor of, or “preparation” for, the activities-centred approach that emerges in later texts.
The use of games in class is frequently advocated and defended by writers on such grounds as their provision of conditions for authentic language use, and their ability to motivate learners and permit them a degree of independence. In William
Edmundson’s ‘An Approach to the Short Language-Teaching Course’ (1974 28/2 112 —117) the writer describes his preparation of a short in-service course for teachers, which includes a period described under the heading of ‘Language-teaching games and activities’. This is dedicated to ‘[e]xamples of blackboard contests, chain and spelling games, story-telling aids, useful nursery rhymes, children's songs, and dramatisation (p. 115). Edmundson here links the terms ‘games’ and ‘activities’ explicitly, connecting them with ‘and’ in a way that suggests they are synonyms. They are, at least, sufficiently similar so as to be taught in the same session.
‘Games and Question-Practice’ (1975 29/2 135—143) by A. L. W. Rees is an article that describes twelve different kinds of question-asking games. Here too, the items GAME and ACTIVITY are closely connected throughout the text using various
connectives; Rees mentions ‘games and related activities’ (p.136), ‘games and other activities’ (p.137), and even ‘games-like activities’ (p.137). In several cases the two words are used interchangeably, in a way that suggests they might be synonyms. Moreover, many of Rees’s games are identifiable, from our current perspective, as ‘activities’, and a contemporary teacher would probably identify them as such. More than one of Rees’ ‘games’, for example, is clearly a role-play, or simulation (pp.