The Impact on Teachers of Language Variation as a Course Component
CONCLUSION
This study set out to investigate whether one particular offering in a teacher education program was perceived as beneficial by the recipients. At one level, we are doing no more than any good course provider should do, i.e. conducting quality control. So, we are pleased to be able to confirm the success of our measurement device in establishing that sociolinguistics is valued by our course participants. The majority do not see it as a marginal topic. To find only one or two from a cohort of more than eighty who have a strong dislike of the subject is an important finding, even taking into account our ‘dwindling data phenomenon’ For the majority, whether native or non native speakers, and regardless of teaching context, differences of opinion are a matter of degree rather than of nature.
Our study therefore confirms, non-trivially, that individual circumstance and interest play a major role in determining precisely which areas of sociolinguistics are useful or relevant to English language teachers. The issue of extrapolation arises. Would these results be confirmed by similar research on other programs or are they to some extent an artefact of the particular culture at our institution? We see no reason why our results should not in principle be true of teachers on other programs. It is likely that the substantial base-level of support for the topic will be typical and that our group of teachers are representative of a large population of trainees.
But we would also see our work as a contribution to, and reflection of, ongoing debates about the nature and purpose of applied linguistics. A recurring theme here has been the noticeable division between those respondents who tend to see their training instrumentally and those who take a more holistic view. If someone is teaching in a clearly delineated social space, the need to consider variation does perhaps seem less pressing. Although these considerations apply to other parts of our program, there are some elements which probably mark out the ethos of an institution more than others. All ELT training has to engage in pedagogic method, and all must surely deal at some point with issues such as curriculum or syllabus design, but it is not perhaps axiomatic that all should deal with variation, pace the comments of one colleague reported earlier (5.8)? From one point of view, one could argue that our study tells us what we wanted to hear, given the fairly broad social emphasis of our department. However, we do not feel defensive about this, because it is open to others to adopt our measurement technique to explore their own place in the very diverse training world we inhabit.
