AFMLTA 19th biennial conference Horwood address: accomplished teaching of languages and cultures doesn't happen by chance: reflective journal entries of a 'returnee' to the learner seat.

Harbon, Lesley

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PREFACE

I would firstly like to thank the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations for the invitation to deliver the Horwood Memorial Lecture at their 19th Biennial Conference. I would like to acknowledge the members of the Horwood family in attendance today. This Biennial Horwood Memorial Lecture allows us to focus on the history of our Association, and to honour yet again Keith Horwood, who was "the driving force behind the formation of the AFMLTA" I trust that in my address today I can touch on what Keith Horwood promoted through his tireless endeavours for the Australian language teaching profession--that is, a continued belief in accomplished language teaching fostering successful language learning, and support of language teachers as the key to that.

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HORWOOD ADDRESS

My Address this morning posits that accomplished teaching of languages and cultures doesn't happen by chance. Now you may think that this may be an odd kind of statement to make. Would I expect an audience such as this one to presume that accomplished language teaching occurs by happenstance? Indeed such a large group of language teachers gathered together focused on their professionalism for a period of 3 days is in fact very likely to know exactly why accomplished teaching does not happen by chance!

However what I am about to share in this Address has been a revelation to me, and relates to accomplished language teaching being more than an accident! It shouldn't be so, but some recent events in my professional work have caused me to revisit what happens when an individual learns a language from a blank slate, and through my reflection on the process, I have systematically made sense of these feelings and perceptions, hoping that some statements I make can encourage a similar thinking process in you, perhaps challenging you to revisit what you as a language teacher do and why you do it.

I begin today's story some 30 years ago during my own initial language teacher preparation period, back in 1981 at Sydney Teachers College, where I was introduced to a good number of second language learning theories and practices. Now 32 years later, I myself do the same with preservice language teachers. That is, I introduce to them a great number of second language learning theories, as well as research findings concerning optimum conditions for successful second language learning that may impact the language teaching and learning process. Now as a language teacher educator, I continually cite such theories and examine research articles outlining how the theories play out in practice. I also undertake research myself focusing on various aspects of second language education.

However I had not been so considerably challenged to revisit my current understandings of theory and practice until recently, when I returned to the 'learner seat' again in a beginner language learning classroom. After a decade, I have begun to learn another language. As you might guess from me delivering this Memorial Lecture, the opportunity to engage in journaling and reflection on this experience has not escaped me, and I seem to have deconstructed every aspect of me, the teacher, the materials and the pedagogy in a reflective journaling process over the past two months. I share my thoughts and ideas on accomplished teaching of languages and cultures, and the things that occurred to me as I assumed a very anxiety causing novice status once more.

After a period of ten years since my last sojourn into learning another language, I recently took a risk and became a total beginner involved in an intensive weekend workshop to kick start the learning program. I was terrified that the young students in my class would make me look too old and unable to take the challenge. I know that scholars have thrown out Eric Lenneberg's 1967 Critical Period Hypothesis of language acquisition--the argument that said that 'the compelling force that drives language acquisition is internal and biological; a minimal exposure is needed ... between 2 and the early teens ...' (Fortis, 2006, p. 43). But it still lurked in my mind, like some dark clouds, that perhaps Lenneberg was right after all, and we had thrown his hypothesis out too early. Was I too old to be learning another language?

Anyway, to return to my deconstruction of the language learning, and not being able to let this opportunity for analysis pass by, I have taken a diary of my learning. My reflections are divided up according to the aspects of language learning that I would describe as "textbook" aspects, making many comments on the affective personal responses to beginning a new language that placed me in such a reflective mode in the first place.

How have I framed my thinking? I consider a number of notions that relate to the language learning process and I will address each in turn: the very first lesson; building language; teacher strategies; group work; materials; the learning environment; the learners; and testing.

I also revisit notions such as 'the silent period', and 'having an ear for languages' because they too occurred to me in my language learning experience, in order to make some kind of sense of it. In fact, I was looking at what might be the benefits of such an experience for a language teacher should they try to learn another language and put themselves in the learner seat, every now and then.

THE VERY FIRST LESSON

My first reflection on my "try another language" campaign reflections starts with the notion of introducing the new language for the very first time.

As regards introducing a new language for the very first time, it may seem to be the "duh" factor, but, actually, you only get to do this once for a learner! Unlike pair work, group work, testing, role play, you can use those strategies and revisit them again and again. But you only get one chance to introduce the new language for the very first time. In the case I am describing here, I observed a number of things that I consider to be important and may be worth further consideration by you, by us, by textbook writers, by professional development officers, to name a few.

How did it happen in my class?

Well, in her first step the teacher greeted us in the new language as we all filed in and took our seats. Being somewhat a veteran of this activity, I made some attempt to repeat back to her what she said to me. After all, I am familiar with language teachers' strategies, and presumed that was what she was doing.

As soon as we had taken our seats and appeared ready, in a second step, our teacher walked around the room handing out our textbook and vocabulary book. All of us immediately flipped through the books. For me it was a case of "Can I see in this book anything remotely familiar to any of the languages I speak that will 'keep me afloat'?"

Our teacher, in her third step, diverted our attention to a slide on the projector screen at the front of the classroom. The two people in the photo, a man and a young boy, were pictured with speech balloons appearing from their mouths, and they must have been saying "What is your name? My name is ..." The teacher modeled, we repeated and so on.

My learner response was "okay, this is fine'.' Then came the next slide, and the next slide, adding more expressions, chiefly greetings and asking names--in the first hour.

We then moved so quickly. I can guarantee in the first ten minutes we had learned about twenty new expressions, chiefly greetings and introduction and naming expressions. "Whoah!" this little voice inside me was saying. "Now let me chew over those expressions for a little while, play with them, write them down." If it was a school classroom, we might not have moved so fast! Although I'm not sure about that! I know groups of school language learners who would have moved very quickly through these materials too!

There was no resting, we just added more and more language. Admittedly we were in an intensive program, but I still believe any lesson would be like this no matter if we were in a once-a-week class or an intensive program. I liken the feeling of that first half hour to an aircraft takeoff. An aircraft's acceleration, mixed with increase in altitude, is at a very great rate those first few minutes of the flight. That was us--up in the air! And I knew that cruising altitude had to be achieved for the duration of the flight before any descent that first day!

Most impressive to me was the speed coupled with the building aspect of my learning. While one part of my mind is saying, okay, stop, slow down, no more just yet, just let me get this much consolidated, we would be off onto something else.

So what do I think about my first point--that you only get one chance to teach the very first lesson? I have reflected on a number of things. First, I came to realise that we don't all get the opportunity to teach this first language lesson, the very first time. Often we are a teacher who teaches the class when the learners are along their continuum a little. Certainly we don't get the chance every year or every term. Second, I reflect that this very first lesson is hugely important for the opportunity of motivating learners to the wonders of languages and cultures. So could we do more with it? Could we find out more about what learners want to achieve from this very first lesson, and what they expect? I believe this is an under-estimated area of what we do, and could be built upon. Now comments on my first point link to my second--that of the "building" aspect of language learning.

BUILDING LANGUAGE

Within theories of "language as a system" I know well that human language is 'well organized and well crafted' (Kumaravadivelu, 2006, p. 4). Systems and sub-systems are not random, they are highly organised. Kumaravadivelu (2006, p. 4) states further, The central core of language as a system consists of the phonological system that deals with the pattern of sound, the semantic system that deals with the meaning of words, and the syntactic system that deals with grammar.

But here in the learner seat again, knowing that language is a structured system was not much help at all. I still had feelings of fear, feelings of inability to pull any language out from anywhere else in my verbal repertoire. I had to be multi-tasking, as I pulled out feeble attempts at pronouncing things correctly, with meaningful words, strung together well.

Yet I came away from my new language learning experiences amazed at how quickly and easily language builds. Annoyed with myself that I had forgotten how it feels, but amazed too. Yes, I know it, but in this language learning experience I felt it. I experienced how easily, quickly and logically we build language.

We know about constructivist theories of learning, and we know that learning language--L1 or L2 or more--is a building process. But here it was happening right in front of me, right inside me. We could view this "building" through a constructivist lens. Through our engagement with a professional education in pre- or in-service teacher education, we are all familiar with constructivism at the core of how we believe learning occurs. Fox (2001, p. 24) says that in constructivism, among other things, learning 'is an active process', knowledge 'is constructed, rather than innate, or passively absorbed', and that effective learning of all knowledge occurs best when socially constructed. The learning-as-a-building-process was a metaphor now happening right before my eyes.

As well, the building of language was more effective as I learned alongside, with and because of my classmates, I'm sure.

We learned from the teacher's first slide:

What's your (if interlocutor is an older respected male) name? (My name is Sam.)

Then we moved to:

* What's your (older respected female) name?

* What's your (younger child) name?

* What's your (same age, familiar) name?

* What's your (older respected female) name?

Then two hours later we were writing ten line dialogues.

So what is my second point? I reflect that the building process is so obvious, and yet perhaps not celebrated well enough. If we were to go out and build a wall, we could stand back and look at it, and pat ourselves on the back for such efforts. Building and learning is a cause for celebration. Could we include more building milestone celebrations in our classroom practices? After all there is a lot of logic in teachers sharing the building phenomenon with their learners.

This leads me on to talk about my third point of reflection: teachers.

THE LANGUAGE TEACHER

What was I observing the teacher to be doing all this while? She was definitely totally planned, down to the minutest of details of her teaching! Her accomplished teaching was not happening by chance at all!

Did she deal with the "intercultural"?

What Michael Byram, back in 1989, called 'the Hidden curriculum' of the language syllabus? Viewed through the frame of the NSW Syllabus, she definitely got us "using language'.' I've already spoken about the speedy building processes in my language learning. Did she get us "making linguistic connections"? Yes, when asked about a grammar point, or vocabulary item, she would pause and think, and give us some "peg" to hang our understandings on, using her knowledge of English and how it works, with the new language she was teaching us. Did she "move between cultures"? Indeed, yes. She would answer our questions about context and when best to use certain expressions with deep consideration, moving between who she is when she is immersed in the target culture, to who we will be when we are there, to who our interlocutors are. This movement took time, but was crucial to our developing language and cultural understanding.

I believe that she included H.H. Stern's (1992, cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 268) 'cognitive component' in her culture teaching, that is, the geographical knowledge, values and attitudes of the L1 community. She included the 'affective component' in her culture teaching, where she was concerned about our curiosity and empathy for the L1 community. She included the "behavioural component" in her culture teaching. She watched and taught us how to interpret and reproduce culturally relevant behaviour and to conduct ourselves in culturally appropriate ways.

What we are seeing here are her pedagogical choices. A number of frames exist to address a language teacher's pedagogy. For example, Kumaravadivelu's (2003) postmodern pedagogy is said to include '10 macrostrategies' (2003, pp. 39 -40). The language teacher operating with a postmodern pedagogy is said to be most accomplished when operationalising these strategies:

* maximise learning opportunities

* minimise perceptual mismatches

* facilitate negotiated interaction

* promote learner autonomy

* foster language awareness

* activate intuitive heuristics

* contextualise linguistic input

* integrate language skills

* ensure social relevance

* raise cultural consciousness.

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It is a large set of strategies, and an accomplished teacher of languages and cultures certainly needs to adopt that pedagogical stance for students to achieve syllabus outcomes. My teacher's pedagogy was characterised by the 10 macrostrategies. As a trained language teacher of some years standing, she may be one of the lucky ones, and her pedagogical decisions may now be second nature to her, part of her "craft" (Eisner, 1983).

As regards her instruction, I observed her to use both explicit and implicit instruction as part of her pedagogy. I know, according to Skehan (2006, p. 55) that 'instruction does have an appreciable effect on performance: that explicit instruction produced larger gains than an implicit approach'. So I know that when she was pointing out specific things about pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, that it was good for me. Rather like her using a metaphorical yellow highlighter on what parts I really needed to know.

But then I got to thinking about those other classmates that might not know about current second language acquisition theory. What did they feel about her explicit instruction? Some of my classmates were science scholars. Would they have appreciated a more implicit approach by the teacher? Or because they were likely to be quite used to "scientific demonstrations" in the laboratory, were her explicit instruction sessions quite useful to them? Why did some of my classmates apparently "tune out" sometimes?

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What could I tell about her "approach" or the underlying theory behind what she was doing, and how she was doing it? What could I tell about her methodology?

I know that she was exhibiting a communicative approach. I note here that it was very much the older paradigm of Communicative Language Teaching referred to by Kramsch (2013), indicating the learning of how to negotiate, to "mean" and reflect on language learning, and not the current communicative urgencies of "tweeting, Facebooking" so characteristic of Gen Y as they make themselves heard. We were preparing to communicate in the 'real world' (Kramsch, 2013). She let us learn when to speak, and when not to speak, and to be sensitive to context (Kramsch, 2013).

Her background brief about us, her group of learners, had been that we needed sufficient language in-country to be able to get around and be understood and even take part in non-technical conversations (although she did try the technical focus with us on the final afternoon). I was in no doubt, however, that she did focus on our communication skills.

I reflect that she assisted us enter the communicative worlds of our imaginations, as explained by Kramsch (2013), not as magical imaginary worlds, rather we learners would "imagine" the other world of the target language and culture, and imagine what our interlocutors were meaning with their language choices.

As regards her pedagogy, she relied on pair and group work to a large extent to get us communicating, which is my next point.

GROUP WORK

How did I react and how did I feel during the group tasks? I know what the theory says about social constructivism and that group learning contexts provide the scaffolding of significant others as being the critical supporting voice in language learning.

I also know about the theory in group work and motivating learning by providing healthy competition. But I know now that in whole class tasks I was hiding behind the classmates who were quicker to respond to the teacher's questions than I was. My strategies when it was turn taking one by one was to pre-prepare if I could--and hide if I couldn't.

So how was the teacher planning to deal with me as I played hide and seek with her? I could feel her "intuiting" that some of us were hiding--she would change her questioning to catch us out.

How was she planning to follow me and my learning? She kept everything changing. If she thought there were some of us who might have missed something the first time around, she would show us that she knew where she was up to.

She also tried to use classroom management language to evaluate our work: to praise us, to encourage us, to correct us. We didn't necessarily know what she was saying but how she said it confirmed that we knew what she intended.

What did that mean for me as a learner? How was I gauging and planning for all this activity? I needed to know that the teacher was seeing me as an individual learner. I know I was watching her eyes as she went through her teaching regime. Where was she looking? Who was she looking at? Was I ready if I caught her eye? Was I throwing my eyes down so I didn't catch her eye? These are things that I consciously know I was doing as I was sitting in the classroom.

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Now I have to wonder why all that mattered. Why did I need to see where she was planning to "pounce" next? It surely has something to do with the rhythms of the language classroom, and the accomplished language teacher's role. Like in a well-choreographed dance, the language teacher, the main dancer, has control of the floor. The teacher eyes off the other dancers, and approaches one in particular, then turns a quick pirouette to approach another. My language teacher was clever in knowing how to keep the music playing and the beat going. The rhythms of the language classroom ebb and flow, they build to a crescendo as we are told to repeat after the model: slower, faster, louder, softer. The teacher then changes tack, and we are directed to read from our books.

What I realised was that she kept me ever-guessing. When it came to my turn, by that time, after I knew that others had given their answers in their turn, but not hearing them, rather hearing my own voice rehearsing loudly in my head, I was ready to go. I would be disappointed if she stopped before getting to me, but delighted if I had her nod of approval and some verbal praise if I had managed to get it right.

Let's keep "affect" prominent in our thinking, I suggest. The feelings, perceptions and intuitions about how it "feels" to be learning a language cannot be ignored. Certainly the learner cannot forget these feelings. The accomplished teacher will remember that learners are "feeling their learning','and will plan for it.

This notion in turn relates to considering the syllabus, textbook and other learning materials.

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THE SYLLABUS, THE TEXTBOOK, AND OTHER LEARNING MATERIALS

The syllabus was not her own syllabus. The course had been written into textbook format, written and produced by one of her friends. She had learned to teach the syllabus (the textbook) and knew it very well.

The language textbook provided for my new language is just one book, and represented a set of 10 lessons. The titles of the lessons are predictable topics or themes: Meeting someone; Asking questions; My family; Time and numbers; In the market; Asking for directions; Body and health; and some more of what we might call language that will allow you to survive if immersed in the target country.

There were also copious handouts to learn from, and I needed to keep track of the screen where she projected her PowerPoint slides. It was a juggling process, and I needed to keep focusing on whatever materials were being used at any moment.

The syllabus (the textbook) had been produced on a low budget by a home publisher, but was branching out with materials, to have an accompanying CD ROM, and Quizlet online games for our continuation of our study, consolidation and revision. The multimedia was not sophisticated, and there were no extensive website links: tools that may 'loosen the tongues of the shyest of students' (Kramsch, 2013).

The kinds of learning that I could undertake either by myself or in small groups included:

* practising my own new variations of sentences using the textbook models

* dictionary and translation work

* listening comprehension using the accompanying CD ROM

* fill in the gap

* open-ended sentence completions

* writing dialogues

* translating from English to the TL and from TL to English

* create questions from statements, and statements from questions

* thinking of your own needs in using the TL, writing them down, and having a go at a translation

* change from positive to negative statements and negative to positive statements

* unscramble--letters in words, words in sentences

* changing from past to present, and present to past tense

* choose two points of a town on the map and write the directions of how to get there

* answer questions in full sentences

* describe what you see in the pictures

* true or false

* write a letter.

There were also the usual scaffolds in the book as well.

* grammar rules and examples

* vocabulary lists

* bilingual word list at the back of the book

* full translations of the dialogues on the CD ROM.

It's nothing new, it's nothing different-we all know this kind of textbook material. Why then, did I reflect that this teaching was accomplished teaching of languages and cultures?

I posit that it is not by chance at all, rather it is the teacher's ability or skill in being able to motivate me, engage me, give me the idea that I can succeed, give me enough negotiation of my learning that I can feel it is being tailored to me. My teacher is giving me the idea that she knows the language and culture well enough to be some steps in front of me, giving me no false assumption that she is a native speaker, or even near-native --in fact she quite often tells us that she doesn't know the answer to our questions. However my teacher is constantly showing her systematic planning for my learning.

This relates to what is in the wider scholarly literature about language teaching: accomplished language teaching requires knowing about methods. We have suspected for a long time (Prabhu, 1990), that there is no best method. That is, we know that language teachers are unlikely to get the best results by purely following one language teaching method. What we acknowledge these days about multiple intelligences, about learning styles and preferences, and how that is embedded into pre-service teacher preparation, thus one teaching method will absolutely not suffice.

However I realised through my language learning experience that learners of languages have a stereotype of what they are going to meet in their language learning, and that may be related to an expected method. I believe an accomplished language teacher like the one teaching me made it bearable and enjoyable. Probably the continuous movement across tasks made it even more unpredictable, yet enjoyable.

To return to my initial list of key notions for discussion, I turn now to the related issue of the learning environment.

THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Lightbown and Spada's (2006) How languages are learned made us consider how the teacher prepares the learning settings, and whether the learning is to be natural or formal/instructional. I now share my reflections on whether environmental factors were impacting my recent, formal, classroom learning.

The teacher set up a temporary classroom, and had no language input around the walls to assist me. The literature says that that kind of input availability and accessibility was crucial, but wasn't evident to help me in my classes. The teacher kept interaction at the forefront of what she had us doing. She kept it a noisy and dynamic classroom.

The largest presence in the classroom was the learner group, my next notion for discussion.

THE LEARNERS

What did I notice about the learners? I noticed that we were real people, not just textbook hypotheticals, actually immersed, and feeling the weight of this new task. My teacher was planning for teaching a class of 22 students, with many variables present.

In considering the learner group, it is suitable to examine the literature on personality and language learning. Indeed, we can classify people's personalities as any one or more of anxious/nervous; creative; extroverted; introverted; sociable; talkative; confident, and so on. Teaching learners with these personality types must surely impact teaching and learning in the classroom.

As regards my ability to define my own personality and whether I suspect my personality impacted my language learning, I am at a loss, although I have hinted at some feelings that might indicate I was a nervous learner. I observed two apparently nervous classmates make attempts to speak, to interact. What was the teacher's reaction?

I would have to say it was "a gentle push"! It seemed to be a case that she believed that her learners could do it, and she gave them "headspace" to try.

What other comments could I make about our moods, our personalities, our feelings and emotions? Outside the classroom, as we took breaks, as we farewelled each other, greeted each other the following day, some of us were game enough, risk-taking enough perhaps, to speak our new target language with each other. Some on the other hand could not get out of the walls of the academic language learning classroom quickly enough. The affective reaction of one student towards their language learning inevitably impacts the affective reactions of others.

What about our developing competences? The literature on learner competence began in the 1980s with Canale and Swain's (1980) work, that learners must be competent in 3 ways: they must possess grammatical (knowledge of lexus, morphology, syntax, sentence grammar semantics, and phonology), sociolinguistic (the extent to which utterances are understood in the different sociolinguistic contexts, vis-a-vis participants, purposes, and norms of interaction) and discourse competences (how utterances and sentences are strung together and connected to make a whole text, spoken or written). Then, in 1983, Canale (1983) added a fourth competence: strategic competence, which is explained as the verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that are drawn upon when communication breaks down.

In managing my learning, which competences was I drawing on? I recall thinking that I could pretend to be competent, using my ability to improvise. This was my biggest desire--to "sound fluent"- according to Kramsch (2013) the desire of many language learners. If I could mimic some of the paralinguistics she was displaying, as I observed her pitch, volume, speed, and intonation, surely I could show her I was confident, making an utterance to indicate agreement "uh huh" or "mm hmm" or disagreement "uh uh" pausing "urn" or "erm". What about my body language which could convey that I knew what she was asking me, and what she was getting at, such as nodding my head, and would indicate that I'm not a total fool! But was my intonation, volume, pitch and rhythm going to sound authentic to my teacher? Was I going to produce spoken language with patterns which were appropriate or inappropriate, or worse, taboo? Was I conveying wrong messages by any unfortunate "gasps" which might indicate shock, despair or surprise? What would happen if I made a sighing sound? Would I be conveying dismay, boredom or dissatisfaction? This was my conscious strategy and one perhaps that is utilised by many of our learners, to sound fluent. Learners can be taught to utilise their knowledge of such a competence.

The next notion for discussion is assessing and testing.

TESTING

In the excitement of the first day, I had forgotten the "T" word. I, more than anyone else in that whole room I suspect, should have known that the complete teaching cycle involves assessment or evaluation. But I can truly reflect that I did not think about assessment until I arrived for class on Day 2, when the teacher greeted us all and pronounced that she was just about to test us.

Panic! Anxiety big time! I could only just splutter to my classmate alongside me, "But she didn't tell us, and I didn't get a chance to revise last night"!

So what was I scared of? To tell you the truth, I was scared of not getting 100% because I know that I could get 100% if I had a chance to study. Why did I want 100%? Because then I'd be pronounced one of the best students in the class?

Why do our students want to do well in tests? Why do some others not seem to care?

My test was a written test, printed on both sides of an A4 sheet of paper. It comprised 6 sections:

Section A--vocabulary

Section B--changing pronouns into possessive pronouns

Section C--change a set of 5 statements into questions

Section D--solve maths additions and subtractions in the other language

Section E--translate from the target language into English

Section F--translate from English into the target language

The test had 37 items. I scored 33, which equates to about 90%.

Now that I am out of the "heat of the moment" and thinking more clearly about that test, terms such as "assessment of learning" "assessment for learning" and "assessment through learning" appear in my mind. Flowever back at test time, I didn't care about the teacher assessing me formatively or summatively. I wasn't interested in knowing I was being taught by a language teacher who knows what she must teach and what she must revise and re-teach, about what assessment could show about my learning trajectory with this language, and how the teacher might differentiate the curriculum for me. I cared about the fact that it was summative assessment, and any assessment result --which I didn't think was fairly offered would show me up. I am a 100% student, and I know I can do it. But you have to give me a chance! I screamed silently inside.

Moreover, we had to mark each other's tests, which I found quite confronting. My teacher didn't seem to know that mattered to me. She just announced that we would now swap our papers with the student sitting alongside us, and she would read out the correct answers, or take other options should there be more than one option correct. So much of the language learning processes were totally obviously impacted by the affective aspects for me. How often have I done this to my own students in the past? How often have I not supported them?

Calm down, I heard the voice inside me again. We have all gone through life in formalised education settings, where tests come unexpected once in a while. At least I could hide behind the "I would have done better had I studied ..." excuse. Would I? Really? That was the test and I had sat it. The test mattered!

Did I observe it mattered to my classmates? To some yes, and to some not obviously, but who knows what they felt inside. It makes me think that I have to remember that testing and results matter. Talking with learners about what tests "feel" like might help decrease any anxiety.

Two further notions occurred to me, and I reflect on how and why these notions occurred to me during my language learning experience.

Firstly I address the notion of "having an ear for languages'.'

AN "EAR" FOR LANGUAGES

You will all no doubt have heard the phrase: to have an ear for languages. It was as I sat contemplating my language learning that I observed in some of my classmates their "ear" for languages. I definitely observed that some of my classmates were reproducing language and correct pronunciation as per the teacher's modeling, and that some others just could not do this.

The phrase "to have an ear for" is usually associated with having an ear for music or poetry or languages, and refers to a person being good at hearing, repeating, and understanding sounds. It refers to the term 'aptitude'. Skehan (2006, pp. 53-54) refers to J.B Caroll's proposition that there is a specific talent for language learning, consisting of four components; phonemic coding ability (the capacity to analyze sound so that it can be better retained); grammatical sensitivity (the ability to identify the functions that words fulfill in sentences); inductive language learning ability (the ability to take a sample of a language and extrapolate to further language); and associative memory (the capacity to make links between items in memory).

That's all well and good, but my reflections are all about how accomplished language teachers are supposed to make a difference to the learning of students who appear not to have an "ear" or an "aptitude'.'What if the learning environment was making a difference?

What is most interesting to me is my reaction to being able to isolate these very students in my class, those who I consider to have that "ear',' and those who I believe do not, and considering how I then interacted with them.

The girl who clearly had the best "ear" was just an all-rounder, and I observed we all queued up to take our turn with her. In pair tasks, I know my motivations were that if she was getting things right--correct pronunciation, correct grammar, correct meaning--then my stumbling and bumbling attempts were likely to be "fixed" as I listened to her correct models.

Then there was the confident-but-sometimes wrong student, who clearly had an "ear" for languages, and he was my next choice. I could pair with him, as he was almost always correct. I observed that if he had not always been in such a hurry, he might have been more accurate.

The softly spoken girl could have had an "ear" too, but she sat so close to the teacher, speaking only to the teacher, that I couldn't always access her.

Finally there were the two students who definitely did not have an "ear". Interestingly I was able to convince myself that they would benefit from working with me! I could play "teacher" with them if I wanted to, and tell them how something should be pronounced, or written, or what something should mean.

It was seemingly instinctive for me to be seeking out those who could assist and support me most.

In turn I reflect that this links to, and impacts, my motivation when I am asked to partner one of the students without the "ear". The stomach plunges, the "I cannot work with this person, they will not benefit my language learning in any way" feeling comes to the fore.

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I cannot believe I am thinking such thoughts. When my students have appealed to me in the past about not wanting to pair with a classmate, I have replied that the student will see a good model, and can learn a lot from the good model. This is called helping out your friends, and is collegial: a skill we all need in life.

However this time the student was me! It was my own learning I was caring about, and that mattered. I had a very close encounter with a fragile edge of the classroom that a teacher must manage as her learners deal with environment and affective aspects.

I believe the "ear" or "aptitude" for languages must be linked to notions of motivation in language learning. Essentially the whole class should have had strong motivations for learning the language. You see we were preparing to travel overseas to conduct a project in the country where this language we were learning is spoken.

When we think of motivation in language learning, one of the scholar's names we associate with this field of research is Robert Gardner (see comments in Skehan, 2006, p. 54). Motivation studies emphasise notions of linguistic self-confidence, which is a field of research that links with willingness to communicate research (WTC) (MacIntyre, Clement, Dornyei & Noels, 1998). The willingness to communicate literature encompasses studies on the reasons that underlie a learner's readiness to actually engage in communication. My mind races as I think about whether and how the language teacher knows whether we are ready or not.

Various methods for learning additional languages have been devised over the years. We can all recall hearing about the Suggestopedia method (as explained in texts such as Richards & Rodgers, 2001), with the slow, calming music, low lighting, comfortable arm chairs and the teacher's soothing voice reading. Such a context really makes the learners "ready". Well if all this needed to be in evidence for the teacher to assess that we were all "ready" to go, then we were not headed for success. The fluoro lights were turned on, the traffic could be heard through the classroom windows. It could have been doomed to failure.

Dornyei's work on motivation is uppermost in my mind and in my reflections at this point. Dornyei's work on motivation related to action control theory (2003) has a focus on the language teacher considering what can be done to check and cater for motivating students before a language learning task, while completing the task and after completing the task. What that means, is that to gauge whether the class is motivated, the language teacher would need to examine what is motivating students before embarking on a learning task, what is influencing and motivating (or not motivating) learners during the learning task, and what the learners themselves feel was motivating them upon reflection afterwards. The teacher can then assess what influences were evident leading to motivation in learners, and which influences could be called upon on the future to motivate the students. I can observe that as an accomplished language teacher, my teacher seemed to be doing this. This is accomplished teaching, and this is planned.

A further idea occurred to me as I noticed very quiet students, and the notion of the 'silent period' came to the fore.

THE SILENT PERIOD

For a long time scholars have considered that there is a "silent period" among children learning a second language (see Gibbons, 1985). It was thought that they were passively assimilating second language input, and even using "private speech in an active process of engagement with the input data" (Saville-Troike, 1988). Is there in fact, a little voice inside our heads that prepares us to produce output?

In my case, there certainly is. I know I was definitely rehearsing phrases, and when it came my turn to speak/respond, I could sound 100% correct! I was silent to an extent, but I had learned languages before, and knew some tricks of the trade.

Can we make more of the 'silent period', or even make it explicit to students, if indeed it does exist?

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Now in coming towards the end of the Horwood Memorial Lecture, I want to bring things to a focus on the "affective". I've talked quite a lot thus far, about the fact that I really believe, and even more so after my recent beginning language learning experience, that how we feel and how we react, impacts successful language learning and accomplished teaching: the affective aspects of language learning impact the teaching/learning processes.

I am drawn to the type of evaluations that teachers are encouraged to implement with their classes to capture affect, that is, the kind of surveys that allow language teachers to know how students have reacted.

Any language learning textbook contains examples of these Likert-scale type survey instruments, where learners are asked to indicate a reaction to polar statements about, say, learning languages in groups, learning by active participation, or learning best through following the teacher model, to name but a few. I wanted to add some of my own: for example, to see my classmates' responses to such statements as:

1 I am really conscious of how uncomfortable that student looks, he squirms as she asks him a question, and that is really affecting me.

2 The teacher expects a lot of me.

3 My other languages are getting in the way.

Any number of perceptions about affect could be captured here, as now the literature is starting to acknowledge (see for example, Benesch, 2012). There is value in surveying our students to gauge how they "feel" about their language learning, and I encourage the pre-service teachers I work with to consider this strategy. It assists in creating accomplished teachers and shows they are fully professional according to the AFMLTA standards (AFMLTA, 2005). Including such surveys in the teaching cycle can inform teachers and learners, and set teachers and learners up for success.

My final comments centre on the statement that has shaped this Lecture, about accomplished language teaching not happening by chance. One of the notions this reflection has uncovered for me, and I trust also for you, as you have learned subsequent languages along the path of your teaching career, is that when a language teacher learns a subsequent additional language, the teacher has an opportunity to examine the teaching/learning nexus from a close vantage point. In my case, it gave me the opportunity to shift perspective, to think as a learner, to think as a teacher. This language learning experience allowed me to experience language learning as an "insider" again, and to "feel" the affective aspect of learning an additional language and culture.

We are all different--teachers and learners are different. This was glaringly the case (almost like the "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" dichotomy) when one afternoon our teacher let us negotiate what comes next in our learning. The older ones among us chose to ask how to differentiate further between ways of saying "you". The younger ones asked all about clubbing and scuba diving. Flow on earth could a language teacher plan for such huge differences in her learners without being accomplished in so many ways?

At one point I began to question why on earth I had ever set myself the difficult task of diarizing my language learning. Kumaravadivelu (2006, p. xiv) wrote about accomplishing such a huge task as I had taken on: One of the major challenges I faced was how to clear the conceptual cobwebs and terminological bedbugs prevalent in the combinations, harmonies and discords between layers upon layers of theoretical principles, pedagogic practices ... how to separate the trivial from the profound, the fashion from the substance, and the chaff from the grain in order to reach the heart of the matter.

Kumaravadivelu, I'm sure, was writing about me, and how I was examining the teaching, thinking about the learning, clearing the conceptual cobwebs and terminological bedbugs in the second language acquisition literature to make sense of what I was feeling.

The importance of remembering what it is to be experiencing what is delivered and experienced in the language classroom should be uppermost in our minds. But how can that be, when the pressure is on us to teach, assess, deliver grades, write reports. We cannot forget that we are solving issues about teaching, like the students are solving issues about learning. I have heard your stories as I have talked to many language teachers over the years. You do learn more languages. Continue with such opportunities to learn yet another language. Grasp the opportunity with relish! Seize the moment! Revisit and return to the learner seat with an open mind! We almost need a mantra--perhaps something like "Keep calm and love language learning!"

Language teachers have a lot to think about as they plan, design, implement/teach, assess and evaluate. Metaphors abound--none more common than the metaphor of the airport flight controller, bringing in planes to land, assisting their departures, managing aircraft in flight.

I reflect that the impetus to problematise my recent language learning experience into a formal paper prepared for this Memorial Lecture, is because it was such a rare opportunity. As busy language teachers, who juggle our professional lives alongside our equally busy personal lives, we don't take up, or perhaps we don't get opportunities to, begin learning another language very often at all. Some do, of course, but you are in the minority. For most of us, the spark that was ignited about the absolute magical wonders of language learning happened some time ago.

Charlemagne, an emperor who ruled Italy between 768 and 774, is said to have his native language, and also had some skills in Latin as well as Greek. Charlemagne is quoted as having said: To have another language is to possess a second soul.

As I mentioned earlier, the beginning moments of learning another language are fleeting, momentary, ephemeral even. I have had the opportunity to experience being a learner again, and I feel I want to preserve the feeling.

This feeling may be somewhere embedded in what the AFMLTA (2005) referred to when documenting accomplished teaching of languages and cultures--that is, our ability to continue our professional learning, ever mindful that within the teaching/learning nexus, the learner in our heads can meet the teachers in our hearts.

I'm sure Keith Florwood would approve!

Thank you.

REFERENCES

Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations (AFMLTA), 2005. Professional standards for accomplished teaching of languages and cultures. Canberra: AFMLTA.

Benesch, S. 2012. Considering emotions in critical English language teaching. New York: Routledge.

Board of Studies New South Wales, 2003. K-10 Chinese Syllabus. Sydney: Author.

Byram, M. 1989. Cultural studies in foreign language education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Canale, M. 1983. From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. In J. Richards & R. Schmidt, (Eds.). Language and Communication. London: Longman.

Canale, M. & Swain, M. 1980. Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1,1 -47.

Cooper, R.L., Shohamy, E. & Walters, J. 2000 (Eds.), New perspectives and issues in Educational language policy: in honour of Bernard Dov Spolsky. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dornyei, Z. 2003. Attitudes, orientations and motivations in language learning: Advances in theory, research and applications. Language Learning, 53 (1), 3-32.

Eisner, E.W. 1983. The art and craft of teaching. Educational Leadership, 40 (4), 4-13.

Fox, R. 2001. Constructivism examined. Oxford Review of Education, 27 (1), 23-35.

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Gibbons, J. 1985. The silent period: An examination. Language Learning, 35 (2), 255-267.

Kramsch, C. 2013,12 July. Teaching foreign languages in an age of globalization. Plenary presentation to the Languages and Cultures Network in Australian Universities 2nd Biennial Conference, Canberra.

Kumaravadivelu, B. 2003. Beyond methods: Macrostrategies for language teaching. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kumaravadivelu, B. 2006. Understanding language teaching: from Method to Postmethod. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Lightbown, PM. & Spada, N.M. 2006 (3rd Ed.), How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

MacIntyre, PD., Clement, R. Dornyei, Z., & Noels, K.A. 1998. Conceptualizing willingness to communicate in a L2: A situational model of L2 confidence and affiliation. Modern Language Journal, 82, 545-562.

Prabhu, N.S. 1990. There is no best method--Why? TESOL Quarterly, 24 (2), 161 -176.

Richards, J.C. & Rodgers, T.S. 2001. (2nd Ed.), Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Saville-Troike, M. 1988. Private speech: evidence for second language learning strategies during the 'silent' period. Journal of Child Language, 15, 567-590. DOI: 10.1017/S0305000900012575

Skehan, P 2006. Second and foreign language learning and teaching. In K. Brown, (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. (2nd Ed.), (pp. 51-59). Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier.

Lesley Harbon learned Indonesian in Junior High School in Sydney in the early 1970s, German in her undergraduate years at the end of the 1970s, then dabbled in intensive courses in Dutch and Javanese for academic purposes in the early 1980s. In the 1990s she participated in an intensive Japanese course, but it was nearly 15 years later in 2013 when she tried an intensive course inTetum. * Lesley works with pre-service language teachers in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney and is ever mindful to challenge these wonderful young language teachers to challenge themselves by learning another language themselves every now and then.

(* Since delivering the Horwood Address Lesley has tried one more language, Amharic, while in Ethiopia.)