The discussion about targeting certain expressions so that our students “can do” certain things (order a meal, etc.) in the TL raises questions about the nature of language. What is the nature of language and what is its purpose? To be able to order a meal AT A POINT IN YOUR STUDY WHEN YOU ARE NOT YET READY TO SAY ANYTHING, LET ALONE ORDER A MEAL IN FRONT OF ONE OF THOSE WELCOMING FRENCH WAITERS.
Most would respond that the nature of language is to allow people to communicate. This can take a vast variety of forms, from saying one word or ordering a cup of coffee or discussing poetry or rocket science, depending on the capacities and needs and interests of the speaker.
The key words here, for me, are needs and interests. There is a certain respect that I feel we that must accord to those we instruct. People in general deserve respect. What right do we have to approach a student who may be worried about when their dad is going to get out of jail or back from a war and demand that they be able to say certain things in a foreign language that we happen to teach them because we need them to learn them?
Schools are quite different in that way from the original way language skills develop naturally. The difference in focus of the learner and the instructor in schools is very different from the way language happens with young children. In the former, they are forced to learn; in the latter, they want to acquire.
With children there is joy and complete unawareness of learning and the child wants to learn and it just happens naturally. In schools the students experience no joy (when they are forced to learn as opposed to where they can just sit back and listen to the language with no pressure and no grade whatsoever), they are made to be aware of the language in discrete and tedious ways, and most of them don’t want to be there.
This is a very disrespectful thing to do to a person and cannot result in any real gains. It is a dark thing to do because in my opinion it goes against the nature of what language is all about, which is natural self expression, not forced response to interrogation.
Why should teachers spend their days being so interested in what their students “can do” when, because they are young and have no immediate need to learn the language, and they have so many other (sometimes crushing) things going on in their young lives, they themselves don’t have any great need to express themselves in the target language, but we need them to anyway.
Carol Hill once related this to me:
..before we left for France this year, I thought it would be a good idea to teach something practical. I was doing the “He is still hungry” (Matava?) script. We had the story going and I worked in as dialog “I would like a sugar and butter crepe, please.” We chanted it and every time we did a reading or a re-tell, the entire class chanted in French “I would like …” One of my sophomores who was traveling to France said to me:”Madame, this je voudrais thing is gonna be important for me when I get to France.” With that said, she said it so well, that a native would probably assume that she knew more than she did and the rest of the exchange would not go as well and communication in L2 would break down….
The gorilla in the room here is that Carol’s kid was going to France. One out of six kids in America is worried about GETTING ENOUGH FOOD TO EAT. Many work jobs plus going to school. “Oh yeah, I think I’ll go get on the internet, even though I don’t have a computer, and get some French input. I’ll skip work tonight.”
When we stick kids into schools and force them to focus on the language and then tie a grade to it aren’t we kind of ruining it for them? Except those who will travel and who want to learn, those few? Why is it so important to us that our students can do certain things with the language when it is not important to most of them?
Related: https://benslavic.com/blog/category/lart-de-la-conversation/