Literary response is a complex activity. I begin with D. W. Harding's comments about reading literature: Any but the most naive kind of reading puts us into implicit relation with an author. A novelist (or a playwright) may be directing our attention mainly to the action and experience of his characters and part of our job is to enter imaginatively into them. But he is at the same time conveying his own evaluation of what is done and felt, presenting it (to mention simpler possibilities) as heroic, pathetic, contemptible, charming, funny…and implicitly inviting us to share his attitude. Our task as readers is not complete unless we tacitly evaluate his evaluation, endorsing it fully, rejecting it, but more probably feeling some less clear cut attitude, based on discriminations achieved or groped after. (‘The Bond with the Author’, Use of English, 22.4, Summer 1971)
The poor language performance of school leavers entering employment has been a traditional complaint of employers. To learn that Messrs. Vickers Ltd. have complained about their difficulty in Obtaining junior clerks who can speak and write English clearly', that Lever Bros, have described their young employees as 'hopelessly deficient in their command of English', or that Boots Pure Drug Co. criticized contemporary English teaching for producing 'a very limited command of the English language' is no surprise. To learn that these comments were made in 1921 (Newbolt 1921) is perhaps rather more surprising. But to learn that, whatever the complaints, there seems to have been little research done on the actual language demands made on school leavers entering employment is a distinct shock. The question, moreover, is of more than academic interest: the importance of communications in industry makes this an important area of study. The background to this studyIn 1976, Coventry Local Education Authority established a working party to consider the educational needs of young people aged 14-19. The working party recommended that a survey should investigate the oral and written communication which takes place in industry and commerce. A steering committee was set up to conduct the survey, and initially one teacher, later two, were given time to undertake the research and to report to the steering committee. The first investigation considered apprentices in the engineering industry. A second investigation was undertaken later to examine the language needs of young people entering clerical work, retail trades, and public services. In both enquiries, the investigators were given the brief to investigate three aspects of language in industry: what young people had to read; what they had to write; and in what conversations they engaged as part of their work.A preliminary information search suggested that very few facts were known Brought to you by | University of Michigan Authenticated Download Date | 7/14/15 3:44 PM90 Mike Torbe about these questions, although many assumptions are made by employers, parents, and schools. Mitchell (1976) conducted a survey by questionnaire in Bradford to investigate the 'kinds of written communications used in industry'. He concluded, from the responses, that 18 different types of written communication were in widespread use in the 33 firms, with nine being most commonly used; that report writing was the form of communication most commonly called for; and that there was 'widespread dissatisfaction with performance' expressed, with a rank order of defined weaknesses being (1) inability to express ideas, (2) poor presentation, (3) inability to marshal facts, (4) grammar and syntax, (5) spelling, and (6) longwindedness. Klemmer and Snyder (1972) asked, 'how much time do people spend talking, reading, writing, using equipment and performing the other activities which are part of their working day?' and their study of people in a research and development laboratory in the communications industry prop...
As a linguist I have tried to give a few reasons as to why I think that language study is important in the secondary school and I have attempted to give a few suggestions for starting points for the type of explicit language study which could form part of our secondary school curriculum. It is a teacher's task, not the linguist's, to decide on order of priorities in the classroom, to decide on the sequencing and grading of such material. There is an urgent need for linguists and teachers to collaborate in devising a valuable and sensible programme of systematic language study that would benefit many other areas in the curriculum. Nofes 1. Doughty, Pearce and Thornton, Exploring Language, Arnold, 1972. 2.A Language for Life, HMSO, 1975. 3. Doughty, Pearce and Thornton, Language in Use, Arnold, 1971. Quirk et al., Grammar of Contemporary English,Dr Stork is a linguist and naturally refers from time to time to linguistics. He consequently runs the risk of being shunned by many teachers of English, for whom 'linguistics' is as much a bugaboo as 'grammar'. Such a negative reaction would be regrettable, for he is concerned only with those areas of linguistics ('the study of how language works') which are properly of concern to teachers of English language. Moreover, his general thesis is eminently reasonable and realistic; there is indeed 'an urgent need for linguists and teachers to collaborate in devising a valuable and sensible programme of systematic language study'-and not just to benefit areas of the curriculum other than English.If, by rejecting the Doughty distinction between language study and linguistics, he means to emphasize the role of the language teacher as scholar, this is admirable. Many teachers, perhaps especially of English, have in recent decades seemed to incline more to well-meaning but often sentimental concern about children and society and less to the responsibilities of scholarship in their subject. Nevertheless, since the Doughty distinction sees language study not as opposed in any way to linguistics but as part of it (Exploring Language, p. 39), it does not seem inconsistent with Stork's own selecting of starting-points for school language-study. Moreover, the distinction is of practical use at a time when syllabuses for Advanced Level English Language work are taking such various titles as 'English Language' and 'Linguistics', as well as plain 'English' and (part of) 'Communication Studies'.
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