IngentaConnect Target language teaching and the ISS: why Robert Young was wrong ...

Author: Stables A.¹

Source: Westminster Studies in Education, Volume 26, Number 2, October 2003 , pp. 99-105(7)

Publisher: Carfax Publishing, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

Purchase options

The full text electronic article is available for purchase. You will be able to download the full text electronic article after payment.

$33.35 plus tax Refund Policy

Abstract:

In Critical Theory and Classroom Talk (1992), Robert Young argues for 'Discursive' teaching that realises Habermas's Ideal Speech Situation (ISS): for classrooms in which students are actively engaged in dialogue about the subject matter in a strong atmosphere of mutual trust. Other authors have endorsed this, explicitly or implicitly. However, there is a danger in such work of drawing conclusions about learning too readily (for example, from transcript data), and in ignoring both non-verbal communication and interior dialogue, whereby learning might actually be taking place where students seem passive, or even confused. Successful 'target language' teaching, particularly in the early stages of foreign language acquisition (i.e., the practice of teachers using the foreign language all the time in the classroom), poses particular problems for Young's thesis. To the extent that the ISS is truly ideal, it is possible to realise that ideal in classrooms that have, at times, more of the characteristics of Young's 'Guess What Teacher Thinks' than of his 'Discursive' teaching.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1080/0140672032000147562

Affiliations: 1: University of Bath, UK

Target language teaching and the ISS: why Robert Young was wrong about questioning genres