Relevance of Knowledge of Second Language Acquisition:
FINDINGS
What about Repetition and Practice and L1?
One of the myths that Peiling’s SLA instructor tried to dispel from the teacher-learners was that L2 learning was not simply the result of “practice” and “repetition.” As discussed earlier, she spent a great deal of class time trying to convince her students that this was not the case. However, based on my classroom observations (02-18 to 06-4, 2002), repetition and practice were the two teaching techniques Peiling relied on most in her EFL class. When I asked her why she repeated and asked the students to practice in this way so many times in class, she responded:
English is a foreign language in Taiwan. In addition, there is only one period of English (40 minutes) a week allocated to EFL. Students don’t have any contact with English in their daily lives. (Interview, 03-13-02)
Despite having knowledge of internal order, Peiling still believed that repetition was an effective way for her EFL learners to produce language in an EFL context. She gave an example:
Maybe after repeating several times, maybe it can remind them [of] the right pronunciation. Maybe [the] next time ... they pronounce the words they will pay attention to the words. Maybe it’s helpful. It’s a reminder. (Interview, 03-29-02)
Another myth that the instructor wanted to dispel was the influence of L1. This was also why Peiling was required to have a research subject whose nationality was not Taiwanese. The instructor wanted teacher-learners to see that L2 learners were very likely to go through the same acquisition order no matter what their L1 was.
However, the instructor’s efforts seemed not to have had much impact on Peiling. In many cases, the influence of L1 still served as an explanatory framework for what she saw happening in her EFL classroom. For example, when asked to explain why many of her EFL students pronounced the word, “shopping” [—p—] as [sap—]
I think in our Chinese there is no such sound as [_]. Basically, they will try to find similar sounds [in Chinese] to make connections and this sound [sa] is similar to [_] (Interview, 03-29-02)
This is not to say that the influence of L1 could never be used to explain the L2 production of Peiling’s students. However, it seemed to me that Peiling did not make other speculations or harbor alternative perspectives when confronted with the phenomenon. Knowledge of SLA did not seem to play the role expected by her instructor.
Why did Peiling fall back to her pre-existing teaching paradigm? Why did the knowledge of SLA seem to exist in a different world that had no impact on Peiling’s EFL teaching? Peiling’s words crystallized what she had experienced in her SLA course in contrast to what was needed in the context of EFL teaching in Taiwan.
I think what the teacher needs is not... knowledge about language because ... language [teaching] also needs ... knowledge about students...actually teaching is more like interaction with people. I don’t think we need very advanced knowledge about linguistics. 1 don’t think those things help so much. I think what teachers need more is that how they could teach and how they get along with students... (Interview, 11-20-01)
