Geoff Jordan
Qualifications: B.Sc(Econ); M.A.; PhD
Interested in theories of SLA, ELT practice.
Associate tutor in distance learning MA TESL at Leicester Uni.
Location Girona, Spain
Activity
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Do you think a language awareness approach would be a good way to learn the grammar of a foreign language?
No, I don't. I think the best way to learn the grammar of a foreign language is to use the foreign language in communicative tasks that are relevant to their needs and to let learners "get" the grammar for themselves. When they need help, give it, but...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Agneta and Jim say:
"By analysing the data, we will be able to understand how the students engage with the tasks and how this helped them, or it doesn't help them, to learn".
They're obviously convinced that their approach to explicit grammar teaching is efficacious in ELT, but note their commitment to letting a critical evaluation of the data by the...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Bravo, Nick!
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
More impressive stuff from Nick. "Who seems to be referred to by we – the author(s)? People in general? Some other group within society?"strikes me as a reallly excellent question. Who are "we" when it comes to 'must'???!!!
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Nick makes an important point here. General English coursebooks lag behind in their use of the modals discussed. I think this is evidence of their general inability to keep up with the way English is currently being used.
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SO interesting! In my experience (purely anecdotal), "need to" is zooming up in academic discourse. I even notice it in my own writing, now that Nick has drawn it to my attention.
Is "need to" somehow softer, less assertive, I wonder? Is it more favoured in the soft sciences?
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Terrific stuff! My congrats to Nick for this careful and illuminating discussion.
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Fantastic, clear instructions, here. PLEASE give it a go! Once you get the hang of using a concordancer to search a corpus - and COCA is easily the best for general purposes - you'll never look back. It's SO usefu! Don't think it's horribly complicated, because it isn't. It's a window to a world!
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
I'm starting to get it! This is an intersting discussion, as was clearly stated at the outset, about what modals DO. We're talking, as was said from the get go, about functions. What the grammatical term "modal" refers to is much more than necessity or possibility, it's about attitude too.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Hmmm. Grammar is one thing, illocutionary force is another, right? 'I must have been dreaming' works where 'I ought to have been dreaming' doesn't. Nothing to do with grammar. "If your first language is English, you intuitively know when and how to use must and other modal verbs but for learners of English, modals are a mine field". Quite so! But is this a...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Oh no! Not modal verbs! Why even mention them! They hover around like lethal traps for the unwary teacher - should or ought to, may or might; how are they connected to the main verb; what about negatives and question forms? Model verbs are mine fields! Aghhh!
Do we have to teach this stuff? Isn't this the prime example of the inefficaiousness of grammar...
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Geoff Jordan replied to pamela rogerson revell
Bravo! I tip my hat to Pam. Shunning an easy trip through the details of "English Pronunciation" and the mysteries of the schwa, she's taken us through a much more socially engaged investigation of the effects of 'making sounds' one way or another.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
A splendid summary, IMHO. Intelligibility is surely the key. We should, as teachers, when we approach the complex problem of teaching pronunciation, distinguish between silly "received pronunciation" norms, and practical norms which help students to be understood by those they're talking to.
But I must give my personal, non-expert opinion. It's all about...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Just off the top of my head, so to speak, an argument for the importance of attention to suprasegmental features.
"What is this thing called love?"
The above sentence wonders how to define 'love'. But then:
What? Is this thing called love?
What's this thing called, love?No doubt you can think of more ways to ring the changes on this innocent...
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Hi Gary, Are you suggesting that "prosodic" is an unecessarily technical or obscure word to use? Surely it's hard to discuss the pronunciation of English in any detail without referring to its prosodic feaures.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
How useful is teaching pronunciation in language instruction? Much past research suggested that teachers can make little difference in improving their students’ pronunciation, but current findings suggest that teaching can actually improve second language pronunciation a lot. My understanding is that paying attention to prosodic
elements is particularly... -
Geoff Jordan made a comment
Here's a link to an interesting, lively account of the the work of Jenner and Jenkins, who argue that, as Pam says above, "it is neither feasible nor necessary to try to learn the full range of English pronunciation features".
https://englishglobalcom.wordpress.com/2020/06/07/jenner-and-jenkins/ -
Geoff Jordan made a comment
In 2004, Prof. Fulcher said in his article "Deluded by Artifices? The Common European Framework and Harmonization", the CEFR was becoming reified - people were starting to believe that the levels described in the CEF were somehow real and had empirical support. "For teachers, the main danger is that they are beginning to believe that the scales in the CEF...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Great to see this vitally important issue being so carefully and thoughtfully investigated and discussed by Prof. Jim King.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Here are 2 different views of L2 learning.
Caroll’s (1966, p. 96): says second language learning starts with explicit knowledge.
“Once the student has a proper degree of cognitive control over the structure of a language, then facility will develop automatically with the use of the language in meaningful situations.”Hatch (1978, p. 404) says almost...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
"In a verb phrase with more than one verb, the main verb comes last.
In verb phrases that are marked for tense, the tense inflection is always attached to the first verb in the verb phrase.
Not all verb phrases are marked for tense, however. Those that contain no present or past tense verb forms are referred to as non-finite verb phrases".
I wonder...
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That's a good question, Claire. I hope Agneta will reply.
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Geoff Jordan replied to Matt Wilson
That's kind of you, Jeff, but I should point out that I have a rather more critical view of Scmidt's Noticing Hypothesis than Agneta. In any case, I think Agneta and I agree that"noticing" is a theoretical construct, a term used in a special way in the service of a hypothesis that tries to explain how input becomes intake. "Noticing", in Scmidt's sense is...
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@jeffstanford I take scaffolding in the classroom to mean "helpful interactions between the teacher and the student which enable the student to do something beyond what they could do independently". A scaffold is a temporary framework that is put up for support and access to meaning and is taken away when the student feels success and masters second language...
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Hi Shona, I think it must mean what you suggest, - helping other learners - but let's hope Agneta will reply. I'm also not sure what this question means: "Is the learner’s reasoning inductive or memory/imitation based?"
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Hi Lian, Code-switching is when somebody switches from one language to another, usually just quickly. So Mary meets Jill in San Fransisco and says: "Hola Jill! Que pasa! Everything OK?" They live in the USA but they both come from Mexico, for example. The assumption is that they both know Spanish and English well enough not to cause any confusion. That's the...
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Geoff Jordan replied to Alison Le Cornu
Hi Alison,
Mike Long's 2015 book "Second Language Acquisition and Task-based Language Teaching" ends with a discussion of assessment. He recommends task-based achievement tests. or as he usually refers to them "task-based, criterion-referenced performance tests". These tests are used to determine whether students have learned what was intended in the TBLT... -
@PamelaC Hi Pam, I quite agree; it's a really great subject of discussion. Just BTW, the generally accepted etymology of Manchester is that it comes from Brittonic *mamm- ("breast", in reference to a "breast-like hill").
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
May I say how refreshing and how stimulating it is to follow Prof. Fulcher's exploration of language testing and assessmment. Technical questions about whether or not a particular choice in a multiple choice item of a test is "acceptable", and more general questions about the validity of a particular test, abound. It's rare, and profoundly educative, if you'll...
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Hi Anita, Good point! How many of us have walked out of an exam where we've given a "good answer" to the question, never again to put it to use! I think that's what Prof. Fulcher is getting at: what are tests for? What do they actually do?
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@PamelaC Hi Pam, There's growing sensitivity to gender issues, no doubt a "good thing", generally, in that language can be examined to reveal the way it reflects "male domination" and other social injustices. The question is, of course, how far do you go in attempts to "cleanse" language? Where does it stop? If taken too far, it can it lead to dystopean...
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@ElizabethG Hi Lizzie, That's a very good question!! I was going to say more, but I see Prof. Fulcher has beaten me to it.
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Hi Claire, I think Prof. Fulcher's point is to raise awareness of the tremendous consequences that language tests have, and these are often not appreciated. Testing proficiency in an L2 s a very complicated matter - and it's not best done by concentrating on knowledge of certain formal aspects of the language. In the test Fulcher refers to, no concession was...
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@JoyI Hi Joy, Correct!
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@NataliaGloubokova Hi Natalia, The first one is genuine - part of a spoken corpus of UK English speakers. The second is from a Coursebook - Streamline English, first published in 1978.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
The English Vocab. Profile is based on a learner's corpus consisting of students' written texts in Cambridge tests, plus data from a variety of sources written by native speakers - wordlists from coursebooks, graded readers wordlists, and vocabulary skills books, for example. There are no examples of learners' spoken texts. So it's misleading to say that the...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Which one is an authentic recording, and which one is from a coursebook? I bet you can't guess!
1 [In the hair salon]
A: Do you want to come over here?
B: Right, thanks, thank you
A: Tea or coffee?
B: Can I have a tea, please?
A: Do you want any sugar?
B: Er, no milk or sugar, just black thanks
B: I hate it when your hair just gets so, you... -
Geoff Jordan made a comment
A good collection of likes and dislikes on the board! Quite a few say that the coursebook texts were not very realistic or interesting. In the last few years, the careful, "sanitised" content of coursebooks has been criticised. This is often referred to as the taboo PARSNIP topics: politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, isms (such as communism or...
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Hi Claire, I wonder where one would see "That your new car, is it?" in a test or exam. It's unlikely to be part of a grammar test, don't you think? If it were part of a written or oral text, as an informal question it's surely perfectly acceptable - an example of "fronting" for emphasis, as Pam has pointed out. And if the student said or wrote this in a test,...
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Hi Lian, Code-switching is the general name for using 2 (or more) languages in the same sentence or utterance. Slightly different is using "loan words" - as when French speakers use English words such as "email" and "le weekend", or when Spanish speakers say "el feeling". These are both interesting areas of sociolinguistics.
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@BeatrizComte Hi Beatriz, Do you know the work of Vivian Cook? He's well.known for his idea of "Multi-competence", and the effects of being multilingual. It assumes that someone who knows two or more languages is a different person from a monolingual and so needs to be looked at in their own right. He says "Multi-competence is not a model nor a theory so much...
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Hi Tisha, Just been to Girona. Everybody's being quite careful, but I'm worried about relaxing things too quickly. Hope you're coping in Madrid. Stay safe!
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Hi Younes, It's disgraceful that discrimination against Non-Native Speaker Teachers still persists in 2020! There are lots of organisations fighting against it, including, for example TEFL Equity Advocates, whose web site has lots of good links and support. https://teflequityadvocates.com/author/marekwp/ The British Council, International House, Cambridge...
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Yes, I agree. The question is: Does it matter? Sometimes (exams, job interviews, stuffy aunts & uncles, ... ) it does, and sometimes it doesn't.
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Hi Everybody, Good to see so many people interested in appplied linguistics and I hope you're all well and staying safe in these difficult times. I'm an associate tutor on the Uni of Leicester's Distance Learning MA in Applied Linguists and TEFL programme. I live in Spain, in the North East, Catalonia, near Girona. Looking forward to chatting to you all.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
English language teaching (ELT) s presently dominated by the use of general English coursebooks and high stakes tests. This reflects the fact that ELT is a multi billion dollar industry, where educational principles take second place to commercial interests. The commodification of education is nowhere more evident than in current ELT practice.
The future...
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Geoff Jordan replied to Geoff Jordan
Woops! I see that the next part of this Week 6 gives details of the website.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Prof. Fulcher has a fantastic web site: Language Testing Resources, with videoa, podcasts, bibliographies, links to tests and testing web sites. A MUST for all those interested in language assessment. http://languagetesting.info/
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Stress is SO important in English. Stressing the wrong part of the word can lead to serious problems for the listener, so we need to help students with words like these
O o equal; o O oo equality; O o o equalise; o o o O o equalisation,and stressing different words in a sentence can change meaning. For example, changing the stress on each of the...
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Geoff Jordan replied to Geoff Jordan
@KarenG Hi Karen, I'm not a fan of coursebooks, but I think they've moved quite a lot in the last 20 years in their treatment of grammar and particularly their treatment of lexical chunks and collocations. Still, problems remain!
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
I was doing my MA in the 1990s when corpus research started challenging the grammar teaching found in coursebooks. Here are a few examples:
1. Teachers back then told students that "any" is the interrogative and negative form of "some". But corpus research shows that the majority of occurrences of "any" are in fact examples of its use in the affirmative,...
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Here's the link to Svalburg, A. (2019) 'Researching language engagement; current trends and future directions', Language Awareness 27.1-2
https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy4.lib.le.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1080/09658416.2017.1406490
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Brown (1991) calls teaching pronunciation the ‘poor relation’ of ELT; the aspect of language most likely to be given little attention, if not completely ignored, by the teacher in the classroom.
Walker (1999) surveyed 350 primary, secondary, and adults teachers in Spain and found that less than 7% of teachers plan their pronunciation work, and 27% of all...
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The way things are is not the way they should be. That's my thesis.
The way L2s are taught today is mistaken. The reasons why a mistaken PPP approach is so universally adopted are commercial: the prime concern is profit, not educational excellence. A PPP approach makes the commodification of ELT easy - it packages the L2 into McNuggets as...
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Yes Elisa, of course there are better examples, and I appreciate your point. But I think we agree about the weaknesses of the can-do statement framework.
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@ElisaFrancés I think teaching L2s in primary, secondary, tertiary and adult education contexts needs to be completely overhauled. Most of the tens of millions who learn in the current way fail to achieve communicative competence , or even the objectives of the curriculum; and current assessment tools reify artificial measurements. Meanwhile, some tests are...
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Geoff Jordan replied to Geoff Jordan
@KarenG Yes, TBLT is, in my opinion, a much better way to organise L2 teaching than the conventional Present -> practice -> Produce approach. TBLT treats the language holistically (doesn't chop it up into grammatical and lexical bits) and is based on a needs analysis to find out what learners need to do in the L2, followed by a succession of pedagogic tasks...
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@ElisaFrancés With respect, you can buy a ticket for any type of transport and reach your destination with very little ability in the L2.
Assessment depends on its intended use - placemernt, diagnostic, etc.
Glenn Fulcher talked about high stakes tests in Week 2 and I agree with his approach. In task-based language learning, task-based,... -
@WayneBrown No they're not being passed off as "objective" in the sense of quantifiable, empirical observations. This is qualitative research. But I agree that the notes are very dramatic and the researcher doesn't make enough (any?!) attempt to give an impartial account of events. I suppose this has been published; if so, I think the editor of the...
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Scovel’s 1978 review of FLA literature finds “mixed & confusing results”.
1986: Horwitz et al. develop a 33-item Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety scale. It’s used widely in studies (see Horwitz, 2010). FLA defined as a situation-specific anxiety, distinct from anxious personality & momentary anxiety.
1991: MacIntyre & Gardner’s review of studies...
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There's something quite specific about foreign language anxiety (FLA). The most obvious difference between learning a foreign language and learning other subjects is the requirement to speak ithe L2 in public and to take part in communicative interactions. FLA has been extensively studied precisely because it is a really big problem for many students, who...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
B1, Spoken Interaction: I can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst travelling in an area where the language is spoken.
What does that mean? What does "deal with" mean? What does "most situations likely to arise while travelling" mean?
B2, Reading: I can understand contemporary literary prose.
Again, what does that mean? What does...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Prof. Fulcher says this about the Common European Frame of Reference:
"... it has been frequently repeated that the scales have no basis in theory or SLA research (Hulstijn 2007: 666).
These Frankenstein scales need to be treated with great care. As collections
of scaled proficiency descriptors it is not reasonable to expect them to relate to... -
Geoff Jordan made a comment
Does language learning involve turning conscious, explicit knowledge of the language into the unconscious, implicit knowledge required for fluent, spontaneous, real-time use? Not for children, who learn their L1 with almost no conscious awareness, or for millions of migrants who learned an L2 with very little explicit knowledge of it. And not for millions of...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Schmidt's construct of 'noticing' differs from its non-technical meaning. Schmidt originally defined noticing’ as 'focused attention' and he claimed it was the necessary and sufficient condition for L2 learning. After much criticism, Schmidt re-formulated his hypothesis in 2001. Now, ‘noticing’ is defined as a technical term equivalent to what Susan Gass...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
In Agneta's cognitive dimension
* How can we tell when a learner is noticing language/interaction features and when he/she is not?
* In terms of focus, there a big difference between paying attention to the language as object and as medium. Are both equally signs of engagement?
* When we ask “Is the learner’s reasoning inductive or memory/imitation... -
@WayneBrown I think I know what you mean, Wayne, but if you're trying to explain how people learn an L2 in a rigourous kind of way, as we do in an MA programme, then it's important to examine the construct 'engagement' carefully. Like 'motivation', we all think we know what the word means, but in order to use it as part of an explanation of L2 learning, we...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Agneta says “Learners who are fully engaged in the task are focused, willing, and interactive”. The problem, of course, is to operationalise these fuzzy concepts so that they can be measured, empirically and quantitatively. ‘Engagement’ is a tricky construct - like ‘aptitude’ and ‘motivation’, we need to be able to recognise it when we see it.
Compare...
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I absolutely agree, Masina. Learners will only learn what they're ready to learn, and so teachers must pay careful attention to the language used and required. If tasks are too liguistically demanding, we can expect anxiety to rise, thus impeding the "engagement" Agneta is talking about.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
The question “Can adults become proficient language learners?” refers, partly, to an ongoing debate in AL about the existence of “critical periods” (or sensitive periods) for SLA.
Long (2007, Problems in SLA) reviews the literature and concludes that very few people reach “Native Speaker” proficiency. For most L2 learners, the senstive period for...
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Geoff Jordan replied to Sara Innis
Hi Sara, The question "Who owns English?" has an obvious political dimension - Phillipson's (1992) 'Linguistic Imperialism' is probably the best example.
E.L.F. = use of English between speakers whose L1 ("mother tongue") is not English and not shared. Native speakers of English don't need to learn it.
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@GabrielDias Hi Gabriel,
The term “Native speaker” is quite problematic. As Vivian Cook points out (http://www.viviancook.uk/Writings/Papers/NSdef.htm), native speakers of any language vary from each other in many aspects of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary for dialectal, social and regional reasons. So which native speaker should be used as a...
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Hi Lezandra, Psycholinguistics is my area, particularly in the area of instructed SLA. Related to that, I'm working on task-based language teaching.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Hi Everybody, I'm Geoff. I work as an associate tutor in the Leicester Uni Distance Learning MA in AL & TESOL programme. My special interests are SLA, syllabus design, and classroom practice. I look forward to some stimulating discussions with you all.
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@AnhNguyen Hi again, Long doesn't encourage interventions that stop the flow of conversation or work on communicative tasks unless there's something realy worth stopping for, or, more often, if the exchanges break down. Recasts, prompts, quick comments, etc. can be done without bring things to a halt.
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@AnhNguyen Hi Anh, If students ask questions about grammar, of course they deserve an explicit answer. That doesn't mean one has to structure courses around grammar presentation, or, in general, spend a lot of time talking about grammar.
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@GrahamBowler Hi Graham, Yes indeed. But then, that's not particular to modals, is it!
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Geoff Jordan replied to Geoff Jordan
@pamelarogersonrevell Thanks Pam. It's clear that most students need exposure to a wide range of accents, particularly those of non-native speakers. What about production? Do you agree that Jenkins' lingua franca core should inform ELT?
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@AnhNguyen In general, I think the answer is "No"" - the best way to develop awareness is through what Long calls "Focus on Form", - quick switches to focus on formal elements of the L2 when students are engaged in meaning-focused communicative tasks - as opposed to "Focus on Forms" - explicit presentaton of bits of grammar.
Agneta seems to suggest that in...
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@MichaelaFischer Hi again Michaela, I've found a book by Labov in my study - I was trying to remember his name when I replied to your comments.
In his “New York department store study” Labov examined “overt prestige”. He went to 3 different department stores in New York representing different social classes: Saks (upper class), Macy’s (middle class) and S....
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@MichaelaFischer Hi Michaela, Of course any "cut off" point will have exceptions, and there are many people like your partner who are proof of that.
The sociological aspects of accents is fascinating as you say, and I think most people find it interesting. But I'm afraid it's not an area I can claim any expertese in - maybe Pam can tell us if your...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
I'd like to know Pam's opinion of Jennifer Jenkins' claim that "with English assuming the position of the world's major lingua franca, a radical rethink is called for in terms of the role of pronunciation and its aims within the ELT curriculum".
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
I'd be very interested to hear Julie's opinion on General English coursebooks and if she thinks we can draw upon applied linguistic research to improve them.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
In the video, Agneta says: "In this adult learner context, it is appropriate to teach grammar explicitly". I'd be interested to hear from Agneta and Jim what informs this view - why, in this adult learner context, is it appropriate to teach grammar explicitly?
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Here's a puzzle for you.
Widdowson (1990) cites Rosch (1975), who devised a questionnaire to elicit from subjects the word which first sprang to mind as an example of a particular category. The results of this conceptual elicitation showed that subjects consistently chose the same hyponym for a particular category: given the superordinate "bird", "robin"...
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@PhilipDuerdoth Hi Philip, I found that word by looking up Google Translate! I don't know any Greek, I'm afraid, and maybe it's not the word I was looking for. In fact, I asked Google to tell me how you say "Animos!" in Greek. "Animos!" in Spanish means something like "Keep trying!" or "Cheer up!". It isn't used like "Cheers!" or "Prost!" or "Salud!".
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@jeffstanford Yes,the same confusion can happen in the romance languages, too.
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@RaulMorais Hi Raul, There's no doubt that de Saussure is a key figure in linguistics, but applied linguistics is, as we've seen, such a broad field with so much to cover, that tough choices have to be made when designing an introduction like this. The team who put this course together obviously decided to take a practical approach, paying particular attention...
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@CeciliaA-H Hi Cecilia, I appreciate that the CEFR is very convenient - neat and tidy, even - but unfortunately, IMO, it's mistaken. I'd rather have a bit of muddle, personally, but of course teachers can't be expected to do the work required to put a coherent alternative system in place.
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@MarkWilson Hi Mark. I saw that report. Shocking!
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@PhilipDuerdoth Hi Philip, Conscious work on your pronunciation - see Pam's work for how! - will definitely help. Χαμόγελα!
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@RaulMorais Hi Raul, I think the course is already planned & mapped out, so it would be difficult to add new bits now. What are you particularly interested in?
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See Long (2015) SLA and TBLT.
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@JulieNorton See Nunan (2003) Practical ELT.
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@OxanaGrazhdan Hi Oxana, If there is, in fact, a sensitive period for pronunciation, (as Long, and many other scholars believe), the implication is that most non-native speaker teachers will have some traces of a "foreign" accent when they speak English, a by-product of their L1. But this doesn't mean necessarily that their pronunciation will interfere in any...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
A man goes into a pub and asks for a whisky.
The barman serves him and says “Two pounds fifty, please.”
The man drinks the whisky and says “I haven’t got any money”.
“Get out, and don’t come back!” says the barman.
The next day, the man comes back to the pub and asks for a whisky.
“I thought I told you never to come back here”, says the...
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
While "You must go!" is used for a strong recommendation or an order, "You mustn't go!" usually means that you're not permitted - you are prohibited from going. This is obviously different to "You don't have to go", or "You needn't go", which mean that there's no obligation on you to go - it's up to you, your decsion.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
Very clear, compact summary. Thanks, Agneta.
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
This is one of my favorite bits - looking at how English works by using a concordancer to look at corpora. Let's go!
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Geoff Jordan made a comment
It seems that learners of English as an L2 need descriptions of how to pronounce English that are based on the way THEY think about the sounds, not the way English speakers do. As Roach (1991) put it: we need to distinguish between "what English speakers do" and "what learners of English need to learn”.
Roach, P. 1991. English Phonetics and Phonology: A...
