FROM DICTIONARY TO CLASSROOM

The ultimate goal of the current project is to improve the teaching of invisible culture in English language classrooms. To do this, it is not sufficient to simply develop a

resource, but it is necessary to also have that resource (the AusDICT) supplemented by additional resources for classroom practice. This need was also borne out in the

feedback from teachers in the focus groups (see §8.5). A key element for the AusDICT to be adopted in classrooms is ensuring teachers are trained in and prepared to use the defining language in classroom contexts. Having discussed the question of what STE is, and how it is applied in the AusDICT, I will now turn to how it can be used by teachers in a variety of contexts—outside the classroom, inside the classroom, by students in classes, and on into students’ lives. Because STE is intended to be a complementary approach to current methods of teaching language, it is useful to determine how and where it can be employed. No tool is a practical tool for every teacher, in the same way that not every teaching material is suited to every student and their learning style. However, as discussed in Chapter 8, one of the requests of teachers was that the AusDICT was frequently linked back to practice and practical uses in classrooms. As such, it is important to discuss in concrete terms how this variant to Minimal English can be applied in teaching practice.

9.4.1 Teacher cognition

Being able to break down concepts hidden in language and explain them using simple, translatable terms is not a simple task, and requires a certain set of cognitive skills. To develop this kind of cognition, teachers need training in several different aspects of STE. First, they need training in the principles of translatability, both lexical and

grammatical, and secondly, in the principles of defamiliarization and the deconstruction of ideas. This kind of training is needed to ensure that a resource like the AusDICT can be effectively employed in classrooms.

Developing familiarity with STE and the principles governing it also develops an informed awareness of the interaction between language and culture. By reading and learning about the cultural scripts, cultural keywords, how they are connected, and how they influence one another, teachers will be able to identify and address challenging concepts in their classes more easily. They will also be able to explain these interactions to their students.

Using STE challenges a person to “think more clearly” (as one teacher was quoted in Chapter 8) and more carefully about what they really want to express and why, rather than just relying on the culturally-specific concepts of our everyday language. Meta- cognition is an important skill for language speakers to acquire (Byram, 1997; Sercu, 2004), especially for those who are to teach. This type of cognition does not just apply to native-speaker teachers, but to all teachers. While the benefit of learning about implicit concepts in your first language cannot be understated, learning about the deconstruction of ideas and disentangling concepts has benefits for students, regardless of the teacher’s first language. In fact, meta-cognition is likely to be easier to achieve for non-native teachers, as they have the experience of learning and immersing themselves in a second language environment.

The ideal situation is that teachers become familiar enough with the concepts and principles of STE that they are able to improvise compositions, or partial compositions, as needed to explain concepts to students. Instead of needing to know or memorise full compositions, through familiarity with STE and the compositions already in the

AusDICT, they will be able to select the parts of the concept which a student is missing.

To do this, they need to be comfortable thinking in the way that STE encourages—i.e.

deconstructing complex concepts into smaller components and articulating them in simple words.

9.4.2 Teacher practice

In classroom contexts, STE can be used in a number of different ways. As already discussed in §9.4.1, if teacher training develops teacher cognition so that the teachers are aware of this type of translatable description, and they are trained to deconstruct concepts into their individual components, then this will flow on to classroom practice. Most simply, STE can be implemented in the ways in which teachers choose to express their ideas to students. However, this is not the only application or use for STE.

STE compositions can be used as a focal point or initiation point for classroom discussions. This requires students to be introduced to some of the fundamentals of STE—in particular that these compositions represent a breakdown of the hidden values and attitudes that go into native speakers’ ways of thinking, and that they should be translatable into the first languages of the class, so the students can understand them clearly. Using the ideas in the composition, the class could then discuss individual components, the overall concept, compare to similar concepts in first languages, compare to related terms or synonyms, discuss what else might be related, and so on. This leaves the composition as the focus of the class, or the class segment, and sparks conversation and critical reflection on the ideas within it.

Even without a general introduction to STE, students could use the compositions as templates for writing interactions or phrases to express certain ideas. For example,

students could use the compositions as inspiration for writing short sketches or role- plays. This would allow STE to be integrated into a larger curriculum, where within any topic (such as ‘going to the shops’) students could learn about norms of interaction in a number of ways.

Turning the focus from STE as a way of transmitting or demonstrating knowledge to using STE to develop skills—a class learning about interactional norms could use the principles from STE to analyse and draw their own conclusions about interactions outside of the classroom, in everyday situations. For this, students would need the introduction mentioned above. They could then take examples of real interactions (their own conversations, conversations at home, in public, with friends, and so on) and use them as data to analyse and develop their own STE compositions. By focussing on different types of conversations, students would be able to compare different speech groups, see variation amongst speakers of a single language and so on. Effectively, students could complete their own ethnographic research, expressed in terms of STE (Martínez-Flor & Usó-Juan, 2006; Mrowa-Hopkins, 2013).

Teachers dedicate significant time to explaining concepts, and then responding to questions for further explanation. While responding to these questions, STE gives teachers a hierarchy of ways to step back and limit the complexity of their answer, and a way to target the section of the explanation by simply expressing the non-understood part in STE, or they could step through a full STE composition and stop for further discussion where a student is not able to understand. This would be useful for both full classroom explanations, and one-on-one questions from students. This type of

explanation could fit in with other methods of giving instructions and in fact is in many ways how teachers currently simplify their explanations. By using STE as an addition to their method of explaining, the teacher does not need to change their teaching style in any significant way, as STE can be integrated into many current styles of teaching.

9.4.3 Teaching materials

As discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, intercultural communicative competence aims to develop skills in students of adapting to new situations and being able to mediate different communicative contexts—effectively teaching students to have skills in

ethnography (Peeters, 2000a). Developing these skills is an iterative process, which uses observation and reflection as its primary processes (Byram, 1997). As such, Martínez- Flor and Usó-Juan’s six R’s (2006)—Research, Reflection, Receiving explicit

instruction, Reasons, Rehearsing, Revising—provide an ideal framework for creating classroom materials based on the AusDICT.

Appendix VI gives examples of some classroom materials based on the entries in the AusDICT. The materials fall into three different categories, depending on the goals and the topic of the materials. These categories are:

• Whole class activities—encouraging interaction, discussion, debate, and teamwork between students

• Small group activities—specifically groups of two to six students, depending on the activity

• Activities for individual students

These activities are cross-curricular, and draw on a range of different topics, not just language learning. This is of benefit to ESL classrooms, as they are generally English- only, and cross-curricular activities can then be used to engage students with a wide range of interests and backgrounds.

The activities focus on just one or two entries in the AusDICT, sometimes comparing the interactions between two seemingly conflicting entries (as in the pair exercise in Appendix VI), and sometimes building connections between values and language. Each activity inherently forms part of a sequence where students are prepared to complete the activity, and then reflect or report on it.

The activities designed for the whole class rely on the input of various class member sharing their experiences and sharing their own reflections. Throughout the focus groups discussed in Chapter 8, many teachers said that they would habitually use classroom discussion to teach invisible culture (if they taught it at all). Because of this response, I have drawn on the ideas of classroom discussion and interaction between students and student experiences to create activities which can involve everyone. In some cases, this might be with significant teacher facilitation, and in other cases, teachers are less prominent. In the whole class example in Appendix VI, students interact with one another, and explore their classmates’ experiences of the issue at hand to establish points of commonality and contrast.

Small group activities benefit students who find it difficult to participate in whole class situations and also can provide more time for in-depth discussion between students. For these materials, small group refers to groups of two to six students, and, like the whole class activities they draw on students’ experiences and relating those experiences to their group members (see pair and group examples in Appendix VI). One activity which is repeated in several formats in these materials is the role-play (as in the pair example in Appendix VI). Role-plays were another one of the teachers’ preferred methods for teaching students to employ invisible culture in conversations; this was emphatically repeated throughout every workshop.

There are also examples of individual activities for students to complete on their own. There is one example of an in-class worksheet, and one example of a homework task. These activities might also be used for one-on-one tutoring sessions as well as

classroom work. The aim of these activities is to encourage students to reflect on their own experiences before sharing them with groups or with the class. Some of the

activities (such as the My Cultural Keyword example in Appendix VI) actually place the

focus on the students’ home culture, rather than that of Australian English. By doing this as part of a bigger lesson plan, students can develop their understanding of how values are related to the language we use by considering their own positions, and then making connections to Australian English.

9.4.4 Student outcomes

Some of the suggestions for classroom implementation above required that students have some knowledge about STE and how it works in at least a general sense, if not a detailed sense. This is part of an additional way in which STE can enhance teaching

languages—through giving students an additional tool for exploring and analysing their experiences.

Students will be able to develop their skills and observation abilities regarding social ways of thinking through using STE as a means of expression and a method and

language for describing concepts in their second language. It also gives them a language and framework to reflect on their own experience and communicate that experience to those around them. This could be within the context of the classroom, where cultural misunderstandings are explored and mediated, or outside the classroom in everyday life where points of friction can be explained or questioned. These conversations both inside and outside a classroom can only happen when students have the awareness and

language to communicate their internal values and attitudes and compare them to the new ones they are experiencing.

In this way the AusDICT benefits language learners, migrants, through preparing their teachers to convey complex ideas through translatable language and passing on skills in breaking down complex concepts into component parts.

9.5

Conclusion

This chapter introduced Standard Translatable English as the defining language of the AusDICT, as well as a pedagogical tool to be extended beyond the dictionary. STE has been developed in response to teacher feedback, regarding clarity, readability, and structure. This chapter has addressed these concerns by proposing a pedagogical tool, based on the principles and concepts behind the Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Minimal English, in particular cross-translatability, non-circularity, and clarity. The resulting tool is the STE approach to the explanation of invisible culture.

In the AusDICT, STE is standardised for the format of the dictionary, and closely monitored through the style guide. However, STE is also an approach available for a broad range of uses for language teachers using the AusDICT as a launching point, but also more generally as a teaching tool. This chapter has elaborated on the applications of STE, giving examples of different contexts of how it can be used in classrooms, as well as giving concrete examples of teaching materials.

The strength of STE is that it develops ways of thinking critically about cultural concepts and deconstructing ideas in order to “think more clearly”. It is a way for teachers to think; to help them reconsider how ideas are interrelated and to help them find clarity in expression. It is also a way for students to express certain thoughts and values they have in their mother tongue, but do not yet have the language ability in their second language to express.

STE is the foundation of entries in the AusDICT, whether those entries were adapted into STE from NSM, or written as original entries for the AusDICT. The next chapter discusses these two methods for creating entries in the AusDICT.