Talking like a Textbook

Here is a glimpse to one of the points I will be addressing this Friday, May 13th at the 7th Symposium of the Center for Intercultural Language Studies (CILS). This is a comic I drew based on one my personal experiences. Here it is:

After having studied French for over four years and having considered myself somewhat proficient and fluent in it, I embarked myself onto an unforgettable trip to France in order to "perfect" my French. I arrived to the Chambéry train station in Haute-Savoie, semi-confident in my third language, looking for my host dad, Joël. He took me home, introduced me to my host mom, Martine, and host sister, Clémence, and immediately drove me to the language school, where a placement test was warm right out of the photocopier waiting for me to take it.

I did try my best to remember all the wise words given to me by Mme. Vale, Mme. Rivas, Mme. Weaver, Mr. Harshbarger and Mr. Dunaway, so I took the test and checked for any grammar mistakes, missing accents and any wrong agreements I could have done. In the afternoon, a teacher at the language school called me for the oral part of the exam and to give me the results of the written one I had taken earlier that day. She said I had been the student with the highest grade in the exam. In her own words, she told me my use of the subjunctive was impeccable, that my vocabulary was very good and the mistakes I had made were just really silly. So, I was placed in the "niveau supérieur" at the school, the envy of all the other students. Therefore, I was very proud of myself and I remember having called home to tell my parents all about it.

After three whole months at the highest level at the language school, I was even more confident of my French, so I chatted away every chance I got. One day, I arrived home and found Martine and a friend of hers having coffee in the dining room. So, my host mom introduced me to her friend and we started talking. As we are having a spontaneous, basic, introductory conversation, Martine interrupts me and says: "Mais, Alex, qu'est-ce que tu as appris dans cette école? Tu parles come un livre!" (But Alex, what have you learned at this school? You talk like a textbook!). There it was, my confidence shredded into pieces in less than two minutes.

So, my point here is that it does not matter how long or where a student has been exposed to a foreign language if the materials of instruction are not aligned to the reality of a specific language community. Hence, the importance of keeping the textbooks updated in regards to the way that language is used in a real life context.

Therefore, here is to Chambéry and my host family: Joël, Clémence and my wonderful (and correcting) host mom, Martine.

Cheers!

    "Talking like a Textbook"

    Alejandra Escudero© 2011

Relative Clauses: Prescriptive or Descriptive Approach in Spanish Textbooks?

Next Friday, May 13th 2011, I will be presenting the first and second stages of my research project at the 7th Annual Symposium at the Centre for Intercultural Language Studies (CILS) at The University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada.

My research is a critical study of how Spanish language textbooks present relative clauses at the post-secondary level. Specifically, do textbooks inform about what Spanish speakers actually say or do they simply prescribe usage patterns? Subordination through relative constructs is one of the ways through which L2 Spanish learners begin to produce complex discourse (e.g., clarify, integrate, and avoid repetition).  Thus, they deserve special attention.

For this study, I reviewed the presentation of relative clauses in 30 textbooks at the three different levels of language proficiency (beginner, intermediate and advanced) and then I contrasted them with prescriptive and descriptive grammars (Gili y Gaya, 1961; Solé & Solé, 1977; RAE, 1999, King & Suñer, 2008). The analysis shows that textbooks make emphasis in the preference of specific relative constructs outside a natural conversational context. That is, relative particles are presented in decontextualized examples. For instance, students learn that el que [which, who] and el cual [which, who] are interchangeable. Yet, descriptive grammars state that the latter is used after certain prepositions, it can never start a sentence and it is most commonly used in written language. Results suggest that L2 Spanish students may be learning to speak in a pragmatically deviant style. That is, using an out-dated form of the language. Therefore, textbooks may be hindering full integration into a Hispanic community when a student is not completely accepted by native speakers because of the way he/she speaks. A contrast with a current use of the language (e.g. CREA e-corpus) is suggested in order to verify the validity of the prescribed constructs.