"English/ French/ Chinese/ Spanish Corner" should be a quite familiar phrase to second language learners. This is a typical English Corner. Most of the time the responsibility of holding such events falls to clubs within schools. Of course, there are also learners voluntarily forming certain groups via online platforms to carry out such activity. I bet most likely you have joined such events at least once with certain purpose, such as practicing the language used in the group, making friends, or simply meeting your curiosity. Then what did you get from joining such activities after all? Did the event meet your expectation? You may want to stop here for a minute and try recalling the distant memory.
I clearly remember the first and the last time that I joined the English Corner at my university as a participant in China. After struggling for a while, I finally persuaded myself to join the English Corner with a classmate who claimed that she benefited a lot from taking part in communicating with other members there. With a mood mixed of nervous, curious and hopeful, I went to the classroom, only to find students scattered here and there speaking English fluently in cliques. My friend waved to me and asked me to join a clique. All I did that evening was listening to the others and nodding while blaming myself for being so terrible in oral English. I never joined any English Corner again after that due to my feeling of frustration and somewhat oversensitivity. Sarcastically, leading English Corner several times a week was one of my job duties after entering the workforce. What is more ironic is that I had to encourage everyone to join it. I used to work in an English education institute whose target group is the adult. As you can imagine, people in different occupations learn English for different purposes. They tend to seize every moment to learn as much as possible. Few of them regarded learning English just for fun. What posed as contradictory to me is that English Corners in my company is originally designed as an activity for entertainment. Students are expected to have fun rather than take notes. However, it is rarely the case when it comes to low level students. They spent much time looking up every unfamiliar word on their cell phones and asking their partners about grammar rules in Chinese, leaving little time that they are really speaking and using English. Joined the French-Chinese language exchange program last Saturday inspires me to reflect on the effectiveness of this series of events. During the event, one bilingual girl paired up with me. She speaks Arabic and French fluently. We were supposed to talk about address during that one hour, half an hour in French, half an hour in Chinese. It turned out to be we teaching each other random vocabulary. She asked me to translate sun, moon, water, party, etc. I tried asking her about the use of prepositions like to and from in French, but she told me that they used the two alternatively sometimes and could not explain why. Finally, the one-hour session went became taking notes of new words again. I can only recall we discussed clothing, but I have forgotten the exact words already. The one hour is almost wasted for me. I don’t think the girl is able to name the sun or moon in Chinese either by now. I am doubtful about the effect of such programs for low-level learners because I think they are hindered by the eagerness for learning new words, twisting the intention of such activities. That being said, we can hardly resist the tendency to learn as much as we can when we are like blank slates. As second language learners, especially beginners, we tend to attach much, maybe too much, importance to vocabulary. As Meara (1996) argues, “The basic dimension is size. All other things being equal, learners with big vocabularies are more proficient in a wide range of language skills than learners with smaller vocabularies, and there is some evidence to support the view that vocabulary skills make a significant contribution to almost all aspects of L2 [second language] proficiency” (p.37). Learners have a rather serious attitude towards English vocabulary learning. Further, Wen-Ta (2010) validates the inner hierarchical structure of attitude in terms of learning English vocabulary. Her study also introduces that each of the three components of attitude carries a different weight in learners' attitudes, namely cognition (Vocabulary is important for learning English), affect (I dislike learning vocabulary) and conation (When learning vocabulary, I persist until I reach the goals that I make for myself). Surprisingly, the data in her study revealed that it is highly likely that both the affective and conative components may play a more important role than does the cognitive component in predicting and explaining English vocabulary learning behavior. I thought it should be the cognitive component that is the most important in our "zeal" towards vocabulary learning. As a learner, we really need to get the most out of such communication activities. Can we turn down the conation for trying really hard to learn vocabulary? As a teacher, how can we organize activities really help learners to get the most out of events like English Corner? We may need to relate the task with Task Based Language Teaching to some extent and take learners' attitude into consideration. References: English Corner. Retrieved November 15th from https://bornformore.wordpress.com/english-corner/; Meara, P. (1996). The dimensions of lexical competence. In K. Malmkjaer, G. Brown, & J. Williams (Eds.), Performance and competence in second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Wen-Ta, T. (2010). Multidimensionality and Hierarchical Structure of the English Vocabulary Learning Attitude Scale. Social Behavior & Personality: an international journal, 38(7), 907-918. doi:10.2224/sbp.2010.38.7.907
1 Comment
Mela Sarkar
12/13/2016 05:41:27 pm
I've always wondered what those "English Corners" were like! Hmmm...surely there must be a better way.
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