Ken Carroll

I think it’s the early career epiphanies that make the greatest impact. Here, I share mine. This post is my contribution to Dave Ferguson’s Work/Learn Carnival.

1989
I’m a fledgling ESL teacher who learned a few languages through immersion and a self-directed approach. But language teaching is dominated by grammar in Europe and behaviorism in the US (the audio-lingual approach). There’s an awful lot of lectures and grammar drills going on. It’s neither fun nor effective.

I read Stephen Krashen and a new world opens up. One idea above all starts to sink in: He notes that most teachers are too concerned with structures and the what of language teaching: What are the structures of the English language? He suggests that the real question is psychological and concerns the how: How can we help induce the process of language acquisition? Suddenly, the world of cognitive psychology becomes relevant to the classroom. We can stop obsessing grammar, and look to a million other sources for creative ideas.

For me, language teaching was liberated from its structural shackles in one act. I was then able to look at it in entirely new ways and from the perspective of different disciplines.  In a sense it was a double-whammy epiphany: 1. Grammar isn’t the key to language teaching; 2. Get eclectic, and seek ideas from any discipline that fires up the creativity. It’s hard to capture how invigorating this was at the time, but this set my teaching practices and career on a new course.

2009
It was the insight that keeps on giving and it still affects my work. True, these days things are more complicated. There’s way more research and diversity in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). In fact, the only thing the theories seem to have in common these days is the fact that no-one really agrees on much. Muriel Saville-Troike describes (2005) how SLA theory struggles to integrate linguistics, psychology, and sociology, like so many blind men touching the elephant. Some touch SLA at the tail, others grab its trunk. Each views SLA through his own framework, methods, and procedures. Linguists see grammar, competence, lexis, etc, while the psychologists look to cognitive, affective, and other processes, and so on. Meanwhile, the web has forced me personally to look at social theory to understand the online relationships that are emerging.

All of these things can feed into how language teachers go about our work. If we’re looking for grand-unification, the cross-discipline approach frustrates, but if we’re looking for inspiration, it invigorates. My advice to any learning professional is to make sure you get ideas that, on the face of it, are from outside your own discipline. They could be the source of enduring insight.

Ken Carroll