Imbalance Day-to Day Interaction

By Author: Peter King
Total Articles: 73
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Waters contends that 'an ideological construction - emanating from a critical theory perspective - is too often imposed on everyday pedagogical practices' resulting in an 'exaggerated level of concern about the power imbalances that language teaching involves...' (2009: 138). Such power imbalances between teachers on the one hand and students on the other surely do prevail in many if not most classrooms: it is rare to find a classroom where the students set the language learning agenda, and they have little or no to say in testing regimes and other institutional structures. Beyond their classrooms, moreover, language learners do not exist in a vacuum: they may be students in class but are also or at least aspire to Pandora Jewelry be fully functioning individuals outside it. Which brings me to the inequalities inherent in the everyday lives of a substantial section of the English language student population?

To espouse criticality in practice contends Waters is to bang on an ideological drum: '... asymmetry in language teaching structures is seen as resulting ...
... from the oppressive exercise of power' (2009: 140). But language teaching structures, like most social relations, are largely inequitable. The day-to-day interaction of many students learning English, particularly those in migration contexts, is characterized by its asymmetry both in and out of class. Some teachers find it entirely reasonable to integrate within classroom practice ways of addressing the social challenges faced by such students. In addition to being positioned negatively in public discourse, and subject to oppressive and discriminatory language legislation (Blackledge 2009), many migrant learners of English find that they do not have a voice and are not audible. Audibility is not only simply to do with being able to speak the dominant language of the country, but also to have 'social and cultural capital' (Bourdieu 1986), i.e. the social resources (status and affiliations) and the knowledge, skills, and education that are Wholesale Jewelry valued by the dominant or hegemonic group. Because of their lack of capital, the balance of day-to-day and institutional interaction is heavily weighted against migrants; sometimes they are literally not heard. English language education for migrants is correspondingly peripheral, both within institutions and in policy.

Of all the branches of ELT, adult ESOL English for Speakers of Other Languages suffers the most from marginalization. In the UK, and increasingly in other English-dominant countries, ESOL is regarded in policy as a training rather than an education, positioned as a skill in service to other areas, disciplines, and the economy, rather than a bona fide area of study in its own right. Migration and asylum, citizenship, social exclusion, the economy, and globalization all bear upon ESOL. So for those involved in migrant language education, to assume they are not working in a political sphere would indeed be naive. Is it not a matter of sound pedagogy rather than a blind adherence to an ideology to adopt a critical, learner-centred approach, in view of the asymmetries of everyday life for many ESOL students?