General Education and Language Teaching Methodology

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Introduction

Karolina Janczukowicz and Mikołaj Rychło

The ideas presented in this book are an overview of an alternative attitude towards education within the sphere of language, with important implications for second language education. These views began to take shape in the nineties, with the publication in 1991 of Ryszard Wenzel’s book about his Text Creation Method¹ and acquired further clarity in 1994 when he published his General Theory.² Since then new ideas have developed around that theory, mostly within the circles of Gdańsk University’s Institute of English and American Studies and its Institute of Education. The first person to coin the phrase the Gdańsk School of ELT was Roman Kalisz in the review of the second PhD thesis influenced by the views of Ryszard Wenzel.

The proposal presented in this book concerns not merely teaching English (or any other language) as a second language, but a holistic theory on the role of language in the development of a human being and the place that education (in its many formal and informal manifestations) should have in order to fully realize the human potential. One of the main premises of this theory is that since human mental development and thinking skills rely on language, it is education within the sphere of language that should be the basis for developing other aspects of knowledge or other subjects. Furthermore, developing language entails developing, in a conscious way, at least two languages – the native and a second one, which is then referred to as conscious bilingualism.

The need to educate a person within two languages entails an approach to second language teaching that would transcend utilitarian and everyday communicative needs, and fulfil the role of an agent in the mental development of the learner. That is why the methodology represented by the Gdańsk School of ELT emphasizes such notions as higher language functions, cognitive appeal, cognitive creative motivation, personalness, and meaningful learning with the use of etymology in the process of language learning. In contrast to many other current second language teaching approaches, the methodology described here (called ← 7 | 8 → aim-centered methodology) emphasizes the need for balancing the development of communicative skills against development at structural, lexical and phonetic levels. Without contradicting the discoveries and solutions of other theorists, it attempts to place these solutions within the overall curriculum in such a way that they would contribute not only to the development of everyday communication but also to the development within the sphere of logical thinking and metaphorization.

The last aspect of the approach to teaching advocated by the Gdańsk School of ELT pertains to the practical implications within the sphere of language education, such as how to introduce the grammar or vocabulary of a new language so as to enable the learner to convey fairly complex messages, what kind of materials to rely on, or how to approach testing.

The nine papers that constitute this volume have been placed within three sections in accordance with the areas delineated above – that is, the realm of general education, methodology, and didactic implications. In the first part, the paper by R. Wenzel presents an overview of the School’s educational theory in its current state, a development of the ideas originally presented in his General Theory of Language Education and The Education of a Language Teacher,³ while the paper by M. Smalara-Lewandowska presents and elaborates on the notion of conscious bilingualism. The last paper in this section, by M. Rychło, sheds light on vocabulary seen across languages and through historical changes, in this way allowing for a deeper understanding of the true conscious bilingual.

The second part starts with a paper by K. Janczukowicz describing the crucial features of aimed-centered methodology; next a three-tiered model of motivation (with special focus on adults) is presented by O. Aleksandrowska; the section concludes with M. Daszkiewicz’s views on the aspect of personalness in teaching, putting forward the notion of the educational event.

The final part starts with R. Wenzel’s proposal of goals to be guided by in teaching a language, together with practical examples of second language lessons. In the second paper of this part of the book O. Aleksandrowska presents texts of culture as materials beneficial in teaching a second language. In the last paper, M. Daszkiewicz presents testing as a vital part of the process of teaching.

We are particularly grateful to prof. Roman Kalisz for the inspiration to create this book, to prof. Danuta Stanulewicz, for her constant help in revising and editing and to dr Michał Daszkiewicz for his contribution to its overall structure.

1 Wenzel, Ryszard (1991). Jak uczyć języka obcego poprzez samodzielne tworzenie tekstu. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne.

2 Wenzel, Ryszard (1994). A General Theory of Language Education. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego.

3 Wenzel, Ryszard (2001). The Education of a Language Teacher. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego.

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I. General education

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A direction of general education

Ryszard Wenzel, University of Gdańsk