Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

General educational values
Just as sport is held to train children how to work in a team and to promote lead-
ership qualities, so L2 teaching can inculcate moral values. The Malaysian English
syllabus (Pusat Perkembangan Kurikulum, 2003) demands that ‘Teachers should
also use materials that emphasize the principles of good citizenship, moral values,
and the Malaysian way of life.’
From another angle, many people support ‘autonomous’ language learning, where
the learners take on the responsibility for themselves because this is in tune with
democracy, discussed in Chapter 13. As Leslie Dickinson (1987) puts it: ‘A demo-
cratic society protects its democratic ideals through an educational process leading
to independent individuals able to think for themselves.’ A general value that is
often cited is the insight that L2 learning provides into the L1 and its culture, or, in
the words of the UK National Curriculum, helping the pupils by ‘considering their
own culture and comparing it with the cultures of the countries and communities
where the target language is spoken’.
Learning L2 as an academic subject
Language can also be learnt simply as another subject on the curriculum, another
examination to be passed. Japanese teachers are not alone in complaining that
they are in thrall to the examination system and cannot teach the English the stu-
dents really need.
The very learning of a second language can be an important mark of education,
another form of elite bilingualism. French had this kind of status in Western
Europe, German in Eastern Europe – southern Poland and Hungary are two places
where I have occasionally found German more useful than English. Skuttnab-
Kangas (1981) paraphrases Fishman’s account of bilingualism in the USA as 
follows:
If you have learnt French at university, preferably in France and even better at the
Sorbonne, then bilingualism is something very positive. But if you have learnt
French from your old grandmother in Maine then bilingualism is something rather
to be ashamed of.