Palmer’s Language Principles: Still Around in ELT?

Curriculum Design, Curriculum Development, ELT 0 comments

Taken from https://www.linkedin.com/topic/curriculum-design

Palmer’s Language Principles:

Still Around in ELT?

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Post 267

Historically speaking, the language teaching curriculum has been “governed” by different methodological tendencies in various moments of its evolution. According to Dr. Richards (2001), this evolution can be summarized as follows, though “methods often continue in some form long after they have fallen out of favor.”

From	To	Methodology
1800	1900	Grammar Translation Method
1890	1930	Direct Method
1930	1960	Structural Method
1920	1950	Reading Method
1950	1970	Audio Lingual Method
1950	1970	Situational Method
1970	present	Communicative Method

Adapted from Richards (2001), page 3

If one gets to pay attention to this chart closely, one can still see the presence of elements in various teaching contexts. In terms of my particular teaching context, it is quite visible to see the reminiscence of these outdated methodologies in public and private school classrooms as well as in many language institutes that have adopted them.

Going beyond this initial considerations regarding the reminiscence of these old-fashioned methods, “Harold Palmer, the prominent British applied linguist who laid the foundations for the Structural Method in the 1920s, summarized the principles of language teaching methodology at that time” (Richards, 2001). Palmer (1922) identified those teaching principles as “initial preparation, habit-forming, accuracy, gradation, proportion, concreteness, interest, order of progression, and multiple line approach.” The underlying question here is, how relevant are these principles almost 100 years after?

Richards (2001) defines Palmer’s initial preparation as “orienting the students towards language learning." A close analysis of this principle that can be moved to any new or older methodology reveals the following in many classrooms today:

· No orientation is now provided to learners in many classrooms.

· Students see English instrumentally because of its connection to better jobs.

· Language schools create their marketing over the instrumentality of English, and not over people’s skills to learn a foreign language at different ages (kids, adults, teens).

Palmer (1922) identified habit-forming as another principle to take into account for language learning. Habit-forming simply means the establishment of correct habits in the use of the target language. But is this also taking place in our classrooms?

· Many teachers do not often motivate learners to acquire learning/studying habits.

· Students lack the real practice of learning/studying habits since one hardly ever finds students’ evidence of developing their language skills.

· EFL learners do not usually develop habits to study or learn those habits.

Dr. Richards (2001) sees accuracy “as avoiding inaccurate language.” Inaccuracy happens quite often in our language classrooms. In spite of the fact that many instructors do work lots on error correction, there are a big group of teachers who do not really work with their learners in correcting their mistakes.

· The way that mistakes and errors are treated in our classrooms is inaccurate.

· Some instructors are either way to lenient and permissive with errors.

· Learners are not taught what to do with their mistakes.

· Instructors may not even be accurate in their speech.

· The degree of intrusiveness of certain sounds is not corrected by teachers.

· There is no even treatment of pronunciation instruction when compared to the grammar of student interlanguage.

· The method used in class may allow for certain degree of tolerance for inaccuracy.

Gradation is defined by Palmer (1922) as the way in which each stage prepares the learner for the next step. From this early constructivist language foundation point of view, lots of concerns arise in the mind of the curriculum developer:

· Are teachers certain of the use of gradation in their courses? And how much convinced are they by constructivism?

· The presence of the always-present metaphor is here: Can my students learn to run before knowing how to walk?

· Severe discrepancies are witnessed in public schools where senior students still lack a lot of skills in the language.

· Lenient instructors allow learners to move to the next level without being prepared creating a gigantic gap in student learning.

Proportion, which Richards (2001) describes as how the instructor needs to emphasize each aspect of the language, is the next language principle observed by Palmer (1922). In the public school system in Costa Rica, e.g., it is quite common to see how teachers overemphasize the teaching, explanation, and work on grammar.

· In terms of planning, are instructors applying this golden rule of proportion?

· Is instruction in class proportionally balanced?

· Is evaluation proportionally applied based on the amount of hours of real instruction in the classroom?

Though I am certain that there are many teachers who do work on their teaching proportionally, as a teaching practicum and practice supervisor I have witnessed cases where all this is simply forgotten.

Concreteness, defined as the “movement from the concrete to the abstract” (Richards, 2001), and interest described as how instructors need to work on “arousing the student’s interest at all times” (Richards, 2001) are two more of the language learning principles Palmer (1922) determined almost a hundred years ago. And what is currently happening in the classroom with some language trainers?

· There is no comprehensible input in troublesome areas of grammar.

· There is no certainty that neither the students nor the teacher can handle abstract concepts in language performance.

· Students may not understand “blurry” syntactical construction if compared to their mother tongues, such as comprehending I was told a great joke.

· Educators may have difficulty in keeping motivation to its peak all the time.

· Learners might not even understand what is really driving them to learn English (intrinsic or extrinsic motivation).

· Teaching professionals could be failing in motivating students recurrently and steadily throughout a course.

· Language performers could not really understand the instrumentality behind the learning of a foreign language.

If order of progression is explained as “hearing before speaking, and both before writing” (Richards, 2001) and multiple line of approach is represented as the many possibilities a teacher has to teach a piece of the language (Palmer, 1922), is this really happening within the classroom?

· At times, it looks like teachers are not really understanding the importance of constructivism in their daily teaching.

· Krashen’s proposed order of instruction seems to be overlooked.

· Variety of teaching is not always achieved and learners are exposed to very predictable classes.

· Repetitive use of the same kind of learning activities to work in class is pervasive.

· Teachers may lack a strong connection with the idea of learner autonomy.

· Language trainees’ attitude towards their own learning may not be developed.

It is incredible that Harold Palmer came up with these language principles almost a hundred years ago, and they are not being acknowledged by language instructors nowadays. Though these language principles were thought for Palmer’s Structural Method (1930-1960), they are highly applicable to what we do today in our classrooms and in our lesson planning. It is a shame that this valuable knowledge that Palmer presented to us long ago is simply forgotten in the mists of time.