Relevance of Knowledge of Second Language Acquisition:
FINDINGS
Need for a Different Way of Approaching Reading Materials
The class met twice a week, each class period lasting 75 minutes. It was mainly a lectured-oriented class, as the instructor looked at class meetings as a space and time for her to get across the core knowledge of SLA—“what people do when they are learning languages” (Interview, 10-13-01)-- to her teacher-learners. The instructor maintained that knowledge of SLA was another tool for making active pedagogical decisions and it “[could] help each [teacher learner] to decide how to solve certain problems and how to anticipate certain problems.” She spent most of the time in class covering the readings and illustrating the important theories in SLA through research findings.
Addressing classroom application in relation to SLA theory was not the focus in class meetings for several reasons that were intricately related to the instructor’s perceived relationships between SLA theory and practice. The instructor contended that “there are different competing theories” and “there is more we don’t know about second language acquisition than we do know”; therefore “you cannot possibly have a theory telling you what you ought to do in the classroom”.
The instructor expected the teacher-learners to finish their readings before they came to her class. During the class meeting, the instructor tried her best to “cover everything” (Interview, 11-13, 2001) from the readings. Occasionally, there was some interaction between the instructor and the teacher-learners, when the instructor posed a question and elicited answers from the class, but rarely did the teacher-learners have any interaction between themselves (Classroom observation 08-31-01 to 12-11-01).
In contrast to reading alone and listening to lectures, Peiling wished to have guided questions for the readings assigned prior to the class. She believed that guided questions would have facilitated her reading and understanding of the articles. She also believed that guided questions could have served as a basis for discussion with her peers in class (Interview, 03-15, 2002). In addition to the lectures, Peiling wished to see her questions about the readings resolved through discussion. “At least she [the instructor] could have given us time to talk about what kind of questions we had for the readings... ”(Interview, 03-15-02). Peiling believed that discussion in class helped her understand the articles more (Interview, 01-09-02).
More essentially, Peiling did not think knowledge of SLA alone would necessarily influence or help her know more about teaching. Peiling wanted to see the class take a further step to address the significance of the assigned readings from the perspective of teachers through discussion. She said,
I think most of the students in that class will be teachers or we are or we were teachers and I think she could have let us talk about what these readings and research findings mean to us. (Interview, 03-15-02)
