A New Look-A Continuing Purpose FORUM ENGLISH TEACHING FORUM AJOURNAL FOR THE TEACHER OF ENGLISH OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES The changed appearance of this first issue of the Forum's 25th volume has grown out of both a retrospective and a prospective look at its purposes and direction. For readers who may or may not have been or may not have "present at the creation," the following facts, uncovered in our recent research into its origins, may be of interest. The precursor of this journal was a modest publication entitled English Teaching Newsletter, published in 1962 and distributed through American embassies in many countries. The editor of the Newsletter's first issue stated: "We plan to include news about novel ways of solving English Teaching problems, as well as articles of general interest about English. We will attempt to answer questions about methods or usage which are sent in to us." This was apparently a cautious hope, for the editor added: "The interest you express will determine whether the publication will continue." There was apparently sufficient interest, for in the second issue we find this editorial remark: "We have had many appreciative comments, and suggestions for future issues. We are glad to receive these, and hope that more people will write to us. We need your help if this little publication is to be of the greatest possible service to teachers everywhere." need for a publication of this nature. . . . As the name Forum suggests, the ideas expressed here will be varied and perhaps at times conflicting, in order to insure adequate coverage of controversial subjects. These opinions will be those of the individual authors. We plan to range widely into areas of linguistics, methodology, philology, and culture, as these relate to problems facing the teacher of English. We will attempt to answer questions about methods and usage which are sent to us." The magazine soon became a quarterly publication, and then was published six times a year, although somewhat inconsistently, until 1975, when The Art of TESOL, an anthology comprising articles The present Forum staff includes, from left, Cathy Love, Susan Pollock, Mary Jo Boya, and Anne Newton. In 1963 the Newsletter was superseded by the English Teaching Forum. In one of the Forum's first issues, the editor acknowledged the interest that the experimental publication had aroused and set forth the purpose of the newly named magazine: "The tremendous response to the three experimental issues of the Newsletter from teachers all over the world clearly indicates that there is a continuing selected from the Forum's first 10 years, was published in lieu of the regular issues. Beginning in 1976 the magazine was stabilized as a 48-page quarterly, and has remained so to the present time. Major changes in format have occurred infrequently once in 1968 and again in 1976, and now, as part of our 25th-year rethinking, in this issue. For readers who may be interested in such matters, we have changed our text type from Times Roman to the somewhat more modern-and we think more attractive Palatino, with article titles printed in Korinna; the secondary (sans serif) type remains the tried and true Helvetica. We hope that the three-column format will increase readability as well as save a bit of space, which will allow a little more text to be included in each issue. As it begins its second quarter century of service -now with more than 100,000 copies going to teachers in almost all the countries of the worldour continuing hope is that the magazine will achieve the purposes set forth by those early editors in providing a true forum for the exchange of ideas worldwide. -ACN Artful Tasks: The Construction of Curriculums in ESL and EFL Malcolm J. Benson Coherence and Stream-of-Consciousness Writing: A Pedagogical Reading of "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" Gabriela Castellanos The Jilting of Granny Weatherall Katherine Anne Porter Dialogue and Dialogue Teaching R. S. Sharma An Approach to Reading for Academic Purposes Ananda Tilaka Sekara English Teaching Forum Presents Jokes and Riddles (transcript of recorded disc) NEWS AND IDEAS China. The Intercultural Implications of Teaching English in China Vera Simone Greece. Activities to Use with Recorded Material George N. Drivas 40 Honduras. Ten Characteristics of a Good Teacher Patricia Miller 41 Japan. Why Choral? Nicholas Myers 43 Malawi. Using Content Subject Texts to Teach English Stephen Dunbar 44 Singapore. ESL, EFL, or EIIL?-A Singaporean Perspective Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew 45 Spain. Activities That Motivate and Increase Student Output Mercedes Bernaus 46 United States. English, the Greatest Noncountable of All Kristin Lems Zaire. Hints for Teaching a Listening Comprehension Lesson Mambungi wa Sangwa Teacher Correspondents/48 The Lighter Side/inside back cover The English Teaching Forum, published four times a year (in January, April, July, and October) for the teacher of English outside the United States, is distributed abroad by American embas- sies. Questions about subscriptions should be addressed to the American Embassy in the capital city of the country in which the inquirer resides. Only manuscripts and letters to the editor on topics other than subscription may be sent to Room 312, 301 4th Street, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20547. To be considered for publication, manuscripts should be typewritten, double-spaced, and have margins of at least three centimeters. Manuscripts should also be accompanied by a state- ment indicating whether they have been offered for publication elsewhere. In the United States subscriptions are available from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402. Any copyrighted articles appearing in the English Teaching Forum are reprinted with the per- mission of the copyright owners. These articles may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the copyright owners, except as otherwise authorized by ap- Acknowledgments and copyright notices, when necessary, appear with the articles. Artful Tasks: The Construction of Curriculums in ESL and EFL Malcolm J. Benson Florida State University The title "Artful Tasks" is taken from an article by Elliott Eisner (1967), who was providing the classic humanistic defense of liberal teaching against what he saw as a takeover by a more mechanistic approach, characterized in particular by behavioral objectives. He said that the "construction of curriculums" and the "judgement of [their] consequences" were "artful tasks." So artful here means the opposite of scientific, giving us immediately two viewpoints on the construction of curriculums: Should they be artfully created, or scientifically created? In this article I want to look at the whole nature of the model or models that we are using in ESL/ EFL, and then try to answer the question. I have taken five models that have been seen in the literature over the past 10 years, and I will try to show how each is a product of the set of circumstances surrounding its development; that is, that the model is a direct product of the situation or viewpoint, rather than being any form of an ideal universally applicable model in itself. I shall then offer a view of such models, showing that there is no inherent conflict in them, and that there is a rational yardstick by which we can decide on the development or adaptation of a model to suit any given course in ESL/EFL. Background The background to the present discussion is to be found in the 1960s. During that decade, a number of publications appeared that, in varying Revising Instruction degrees, affected all aspects of education. One of these was Mager's (1962) book on behavioral objectives. Although not proposing any new idea to teaching, it nevertheless came at a time when the word accountability was starting to be heard. It seemed to offer at least a partial answer to those calling for teachers to be able to specify exactly what they were teaching. A second document of the '60s was the U.S. Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Title VII of which required ESL programs to be publicly accountable. The symbiotic relationship between that which demanded accountability (the Act) and that which purported to show it (behavioral objectives) is still with us. The result of the movement towards accountability was that the earliersomewhat nebulous-approach to curriculum design became the focus of attention in almost all areas of education. A host of new terms became current: terms like behavioral or instructional objectives, criterion-referenced tests (associated with the name of Popham), PSI or Mastery Learning (Keller), needs analysis, formative and summative evaluation (all associated with the names of Gagné and Briggs), plus a host of other terms. Models of instructional design began to appear in the literature, and in due course ESL/EFL models were also seen, starting mainly in the 1970s. Although these are the subject of this article, I would like first of all to look at a typical training model (Dick and Carey 1978): |