In the preceding chapter, we looked into the meanings of student pronunciation, which is an expression in the physical substance of the language of how the individual responds to its alienness. In this chapter we shall explore the meaning of some classroom activities whose form is under the direct control of the teacher. Classroom activities come in countless sizes and shapes, but the ones that we shall examine most thoroughly are drills and exercises. Chosen because they come nearest to being ubiquitous and inevitable, they illustrate points that can also be made about many of the more specialized forms of classroom activity.
At the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State, we have customarily distinguished between drills and exercises. In a drill, there is at any time only one student response that will be accepted as entirely satisfactory, while an exercise may have two or more acceptable answers.
Two common types of drill are mimicry-memorization of dialogs, and substitution series in which substitution of a cue word in one sentence produces the next sentence, which, in its turn, is altered in response to a further cue.
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The theoretical framework that has been most helpful to me in understanding the meaning of drills has been Transactional Analysis. This view of personality has the incidental advantage of being easily available in relatively readable form (Berne 1964, 1972; Harris 1968} and of having received widespread discussion in recent years. Thus, though I may be spared the task of fully describing the theory, it is necessary to summarize parts of it which are essential for following the argument of this chapter.
For that purpose, the most important points may be grouped under three headings: "ego states," "transactions," and "structuring of time." A harmonizing, but different and insightful discussion of drill is provided by Curran (1968:342-351 ).
Ego States
We have all had occasion, in observing ourselves and others, to see a person's behavior change suddenly. The same biological individual who at one moment was poised and analytical suddenly becomes agitated and begins to talk rapidly, on the verge of tears. Or the person who has been acting in the impatient and selfish manner of a small child may before our very eyes suddenly become self-righteous, critical and dogmatic. Inside the same bone structure, skin and clothes, a number of distinct and coherent systems of feeling seem to co-exist and make themselves visible as distinct and coherent behavior patterns (Harris 1968: 38f; Berne 1964:23 ). In Transactional Analysis, each of these patterns is called an ego state.
A fundamental assertion of Transactional Analysis is that the number of ego states within any individual is three-no more and no fewer-and that these ego states are not mere theoretical constructs, but psychological realities (Berne 1964:23}. They originate in different aspects, depend on different sets of memory recordings, and produce different results according to which of them is in control at a given moment. Their names (always spelled with a capital letter} are Parent, Adult and Child.
The Parent. The Parent ego state draws on early memories of how things were in the great, overwhelming world outside the skin of a very young child. Since the child's mother and father (or their substitutes} were by far the most powerful figures in that world, the ego state derives its name from them, but includes data from any other source of the experiences that were imposed on the small child from without. It includes
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the rules that were taught to the child, but also the ways of living that he saw and heard around him (Harris 1968 :4 lf). These "memory-tapes"
cannot be erased, and they influence the individual throughout his entire life.
Numerous clues indicate the moments when a person is probably under the control of his Parent ego state. Some nonverbal clues are a furrowed brow, a pointing index finger, a "horrified" or disapproving look, sighing, and patting another person on the head. Some verbal cues are "always" and "never," which are consistent with a long-standing system of conclusions which are not open to new data; evaluative words, both favorable and unfavorable; "if I were you ... "; "should" and
"ought" (Harris 1968:90). In addition, a person in this ego state is likely to use a tone of voice, gestures and specific facial expressions that he learned many years ago from his own parents.
Being in the Parent ego state is not to be confused with being a biological parent. The ego state manifests itself in very early years, as when small children play "house," or when one tells another "You're not supposed to do it that way I" Some popular fictional examples of parents who are also full-time Parents are found in Daniel Green burg's How to Be a Jewish Mother (1964) ("You don't have to be either Jewish or a mother to be a Jewish mother") and the comic strip Momma.
Although the Parent ego state is much maligned and often overused, it has certain legitimate and essential functions. To the extent that its data are consistent with present-reality, it is useful in controlling and protecting the Child, and in saving the Adult from overwork (Harris 1968:57).
In our analysis of the activities that accompany a language drill, we will find it useful to distinguish between the "natural" or "nurturing"
functions of parents and the Parent, and their "controlling" or "bossy"
functions (Berne 1972: 13 ). There can, of course, be no sharp line between them, but we will refer to this difference in subsequent chapters.
The Child. The Child ego state comes out of memories about how we thought and acted before approximately age 5, and particularly how we felt (Berne 1972:12; Harris 1968:50, 47). Much of the Child consists of recordings of internal events, some of which were emotional responses to the same external events that became parts of the Parent. By the time a biological child leaves for school, "it is hard to imagine that any emotion exists which (he) has not already felt" (Harris 1968:50). The Child recordings, like the Parent recordings, are unerasable.
There are numerous signs that the Child has been activated. Display of emotion, either pleasant or unpleasant, is one of them (Harris 1968:118). Some specific nonverbal signs, in American culture at least, are rolling eyes, shrugging shoulders, downcast eyes, and raising the hand for permission to speak. Verbally, where the Parent makes sweeping and judgmental statements, the Child is likely to emphasize his lack of responsibility by using such words as "I wish" and "I dunno." He is interested in comparisons, and particularly in establishing that "Mine is Better" than anybody else's. When he wants something, he has no patience with delay, but wants it now! (Harris 1968:91 ).
Much of the energy of the Parent, as we have seen, is spent in protecting and controlling the Child, and the Adult devotes much of its time to getting things that the Child wants. Nevertheless, the Child is much more than a nuisance. Berne tells us that it is "in many ways the most valuable part of the personality" (1964:25), for in the Child reside
"intuition, creativity and spontaneous drive and enjoyment" (1964:27).
These, of course, are the very qualities that make for language learning that is both "receptive" and "productive" as I have used these terms.
Just as we have distinguished between the Natural and the Controlling Parent, we need to differentiate among the Natural, the Adapted, and the Rebellious Child (Berne 1972:13), and particularly between the first two of these. The Natural Child is self-expressive; the Adapted Child seeks to avoid trouble with the outside power structure, and to get what it wants (1972:104), whether by whining, by compliance, or by dissimulation. The Natural Child is the one that learns languages; the compliant variety of Adapted Child works for good marks.
An important part of the Child recordings in the memory of virtually everyone consists of feelings of inadequacy, of having been wrong, and of having been the object of disapproval, correction and punishment. Given the immaturity and the dependence of the baby, a certain number of these feelings are inevitable. At the time when the infant experiences these feelings, however, he cannot understand the inevitability of his inadequacies and errors. Instead, he accepts these experiences as evidence about himself. This becomes the basis for an "I'm not OK" position which the individual may spend his life expressing, affirming and trying to escape from.
The Adult. Transactional Analysis applies the term Adult to the ego state in which a person "appraises his environment objectively, and
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calculates its possibilities and probabilities on the basis of past experience"
(Berne 1972:11 ). This is the Self as it reaches out and tries to make sense of the outside world. This ego state begins at least as soon as an infant is able to move itself around, so that it must begin to choose among alternatives; Gattegno (1973) thinks that it begins at the moment of conception. The incessant asking of questions, so typical of young children, is a striking manifestation of the Adult, and not of the Child. The Adult sometimes is compared to a computer. It reconciles what th_e Child wants with what the Parent will allow; it then figures out whether the result is advisable under present circumstances and, if so, how to achieve it. Some indications that the Adult is in charge are alert movement of eyes, face and body; questions like who?, what?, why?; expressions like
"probably" and "in my opinion," instead of dogmatic statements (Harris 1968:92).
All three ego states are necessary to a healthy personality. What is difficult is to keep them in proper balance with one another, and this task too is grist for the Adult's computer. The Adult, unfortunately, also is the ego state most likely to be swept aside by the others under pressure of external events.
Transactions
In Transactional Analysis, the basic unit of human interaction is called a stroke. A stroke is any action that implies recognition of another person's existence. There are good and bad strokes, pleasant and unpleasant ones, and bigger or smaller ones. People differ in their needs for stroking, but even bad strokes are less destructive than stroke-deprivation.
An exchange of strokes is a transaction. Depending on the ego states of persons involved, a transaction may be "Parent-Parent," "Parent-Child,"
"Adult-Adult," etc. Sometimes, two participants have different views of the same transaction. One may try in an Adult ego state to address the other person's Adult, while the second may try to play Parent to the other's Child. Transactions like this, called crossed transactions, generally prevent satisfactory communication between the people involved.
Finally, and very important for an understanding of what goes on in a classroom are ulterior transactions. Here, what on a social level seems to be, for example, Adult-Adult, on a psychological level is something else,
perhaps Child-Child or Parent-Child. Examples of ulterior transactions, as well as a description of six "ways of structuring time," will be found in the following discussion of drills and exercises.
Structuring of Time
What is a drill, in the terminology of Transactional Analysis?
Berne, Harris, and others speak of six ways of structuring time:
withdrawal, rituals, activities, pastimes, games, and intimacy. Clearly, a drill does not allow for withdrawal, at least not of the physical kind. It may, however, partake of some of the characteristics of other modes of time-structuring.
Most obviously, a drill is "a socially programmed use of time where everybody agrees to do the same thing" (Harris 1968:143)" In this respect, it meets the definition of a ritual. Of rituals we are told that they can keep people apart; that they are designed to get a group of individuals through the hour without anyone having to get close to anyone else; that they require little commitment, and so bring little fulfillment. Insofar as a drill is a ritual, these are warnings to any language teacher who is interested in the psychodynamic aspects of what goes on in class. They are only warnings, however, and not prohibitions; if we use drills, we need to be aware of their possible limitations.
These limitations are, in fact, not necessarily bad. Their very impersonality may at times be exploited as a temporary means of reducing the level of threat and anxiety.
But a drill may also be "a common, convenient, comfortable, and utilitarian method of structuring time by a project designed to deal with the material of external reality." Even though drills are not always comfortable, and even though their actual utility in dealing with the external realities of an alien grammatical system is seriously questioned by many these days, drills probably fit into this, Berne's definition of an
"activity." Activities are, externally at least, transactions between the Adult ego states of two or more people (Berne 1972:23). Insofar as they do achieve their stated purpose of making it easier for the student to use correctly some part of the language-or insofar as the student has faith that this is happening!-drills may be highly satisfying in and of themselves (Harris 1968: 143 ). They may also lead to future satisfactions in the form of "stroking for a job well done" (Harris 1968:144)-passing grades, the
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Wilder Prize in German, cash rewards from Father, and so on. But again, while an activity is going on, there may or may not be intimate involvement among the participants (Harris 1968: 144 ). Activities, Ii ke withdrawal and rituals, can keep people apart. They are consistent with either the presence or the absence of a high level of mutual trust within the classroom. They may or may not form part of an overall pattern that includes significant and mutually edifying communication.
Drills, in the narrow sense in which I use the term here, do- not fit into the definition of a "pastime," which will concern us in our discussion of exercises (p. 81 ff). In themselves, drills certainly do not qualify as
"games." Nevertheless, they can and often do form counters in some of the games that teachers and students play. Or, to change the figure of speech, they may become the fields, or the boards, on which these games are played. Therefore it is necessary to look briefly at "games" as this term is used in Transactional Analysis.
Berne has provided at least two definitions of game. The second does not contradict the first, but it does impose additional conditions on use of the term.
(1) Berne (1964:48} said that games differ in two respects from other ways of structuring time. The first difference is that in a game, things happen simultaneously on at least two levels at once. What on the surface seems to be a series of _transactions between two Adults turns out to be also, and in a more important way, an exchange between Parent and Child, or between two Child ego states. Berne calls this the "ulterior"
quality of games. The second distinguishing characteristic of games, in the 1964 definition, is that each leads to its characteristic "payoff" in the form of feelings (not necessarily identical} which come to each participant
or "player."
An example may help to clarify the meaning of this definition of
"game." A popular game described by Berne is one that he calls "Why Don't You-Yes But." In this game, the player who is "it" poses a problem to one or more other players and asks for advice. If they agree to play (i.e., if they respond with helpful suggestions}, "it" systematically rejects everything they offer. On the social level, this episode was an Adult request for the help of other Adults in dealing with some aspect of external reality. On the psychological level, however, where the game originated and where the payoffs were felt, it was something quite
different. The Child ego state of "it" was interacting with the Parents in the other players. The "payoff" for "it" is the silence at the end of the game, which shows that the Parents have racked their brains without being able to come up with a satisfactory solution (Berne 1964:120). It is they, and not the Child, who are inadequate. "It's" Child thus gains temporary relief from his NOT-OK position. Payoffs for the other players may take the form of frustration and/or a confirmation of the position that
"Children are always ungrateful, and there's no helping them."
The game of "Why Don't You-Yes But" illustrates the ulterior nature of games (the disparity between social and psychological levels), and gives examples of what is meant by "payoffs."
(2) In his later definition of game (1972:23), Berne adds the requirement that during the course of the game, there be a "switch" when a response which one player has given for a particular purpose on a particular level is taken by another player and converted to another purpose on another level. There ensues a period of confusion while the first player tries to figure out what has happened, and this in turn is followed by the payoff(s). While this chronological sequence may be a valid inference from the accumulated experience of transactional analysts, this feature does not show up clearly in all of the games which are described in the books on which I have drawn for this chapter. In addition, my purposes here are less comprehensive than those of the therapist. For these two reasons, I shall work principally with Berne's 1964 definition.
Many experienced language teachers to whom I have described "Why Don't You-Yes But" immediately recognize it as one that some of their students have played with them. In the Language Study version, of course, drills and other activities provided by the teacher take the place of the suggestions of helpful friends, but the response of "it" is still to find fault with everything.
It may be that the language teacher who goes from workshop to workshop without finding anything of value, or who rejects as worthless the two or three dozen books currently in print for his language, is himself playing another version of the same game. What is significant here is not the rejection itself, because that may be done for Adult as well as for Child reasons. It is rather the satisfaction at having been able to reject, for this can block out the Adult's capacity to reason and to estimate probabilities.
Drills and Exercises 73 If, as Transactional Analysis would have us believe, the underlying cause of this kind of behavior is in the ''l'M NOT-OK" position which is shared by almost all human beings, then the cure for the behavior does not lie either in reasoning with the person, or in scolding him, or in giving him bad grades. Nor does it lie primarily in designing better, more appropriate drills (or, in the case of the teacher-player, better workshops or more
Drills and Exercises 73 If, as Transactional Analysis would have us believe, the underlying cause of this kind of behavior is in the ''l'M NOT-OK" position which is shared by almost all human beings, then the cure for the behavior does not lie either in reasoning with the person, or in scolding him, or in giving him bad grades. Nor does it lie primarily in designing better, more appropriate drills (or, in the case of the teacher-player, better workshops or more