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Articles |
An empirical look at the integration and separation of skills in ELT
Larry Selinker is Professor of Linguistics and former Director of the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan. His research interests are in ELT theory, language for specific purposes, discourse analysis, and second-language acquisition.
Russell Tomlin is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Director of the American English Institute at the University of Oregon. His research interests are in discourse analysis, second-language acquisition and ELT theory.
By considering a particular problem area in ELT research—the integration! separation of ‘the four skills’—we argue that an increased concern for empirical methodology will necessarily bring ELT theory into closer conjunction with teaching practice. In this article we report five case studies which all aim to show that an empirically grounded and insightful ELT theory is indeed possible. In so doing, we uncover several hypotheses which control pedagogical decision-making, but which do not appear to be explicitly stated, and for which substantial evidence is lacking. One unfortunate result is that other potentially useful strategies for teaching remain ignored. We argue that increasing the rigour of observations ofskill integration/ separation opens the way for more systematic exploration of the principles which underlie the material presented in these case studies.
Finally, we note that in these studies, important decisions affecting students' time and learning are not grounded in fact or in principles that pedagogical decision makers consciously consider. Nor apparently is the raising of such questions even contemplated. We note the three types of non-empirical rationale for current decision-making in the area of skill integration/separation. We contend that the best pedagogical decisions for students can be made only by taking into serious account systematic observations of student performance in specific learning situations in which differing integration/separation schemes are used.