Standards of learning and the investment principle

H G Widdowson

Universität WienFDZ Englisch

22. Oktober 2007

1.

Standards:Criteria for regulating activity.Conformity to an acceptable norm.

2. Globalization on an unprecedented scale does not change the fact that most people everywhere still live their lives in local settings and feel the need to develop and express local identities to pass on to their children. Language, along with features such as dress, behaviour patterns, religion, or occupation, serves to mark group identity.

(Nettle & Romaine: Vanishing Voices: 192)

3.

Primary communities: small scale, local.

Secondary communities: large scale, global.

4.

Primary local communities : endonormative standards developed from within.

Secondary global communities: exonormative standards imposed from outside.

5.

Communities of practice. (Wenger: Communities of Practice. 1998)

Discourse communities. (Swales:Genre Analysis. 1990)

6.

Language competence as qualification.

Standards regulated by specific purpose.

7.

Language training.

Language education.

8.

Language education: Higher objectives: intellectual self-realization, cultural enlightenment, social and aesthetic awareness.

Institutionalized standards: regulation of learning, objectives quantified.

Qualification = quantification.

9.

Problem for education:

Individual enlightenment vs. social qualification.

10.

Standards as levelling devices.

Positive: equality by equivalence.

Negative: imposition of conformity.

11.

Predictable purpose for learning - criteria for standards clear

Unpredictable purpose - ?standards?

12.

Standards set by reference to native-speaker norms.

Standards = standard language.

Irrelevant.Unattainable.

13.

Standards as recipes for failure.

Failure due to how standards are met.Failure due to how standards are set.

14.

The foreign language as subject.

15.

Different contexts of learning and use.

Learner reality vs user reality.

16.

Investment for learning.

17.

Language learning:

Product orientation:

Accumulation Interlanguage Native speaker competence.

18.

Language learning:

Process orientation: Investment – capability for learning.

19.

Language for learners to appropriate and to learn from.

20.

Investment language learning & the setting of standards.

The limits of measurement.

21.

Validity and reliability.

Danke für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit.