Here, for all, is fine example of the workings of TEFLese: There are, then, at least two kinds of language production as part of the learning process in the classroom. At times people produce language in order to communicate.
At other times they produce language simply in order to practise correct forms, or to demonstrate that they can produce a correct form. This may seem to be a
straightforward distinction, but at times it can cause confusion in the classroom.
Here is an example from some actual classroom data (J R Willis 1981). The teacher has worked very hard to set up a situation in which students are to practise a
number of verbs followed by the gerund form -ing. She tells one student:
Antonio, ask Socoop if he likes being a father.
Antonio says:
Socoop, do you like being a father?
Socoop replies:
Yes, I erm . . . I am father of four children
. By standards operating outside the classroom this is a perfectly reasonable reply. It is also, as it happens, an acceptable sentence of English. The teacher, however, is not
satisfied with this reply. She says:
Yes, all right, listen to the question though
. Socoop listens to the question and then tries a series of replies without real success until the teacher resolves the issue by answering for him:
Yes, I do. I
like being a father. The learners do not challenge the truth of the teacher's utterance, even though the teacher is a woman, because they know it is not a real statement intended to
communicate something about the teacher's attitude to parenthood. It is simply the teacher correcting Socoop and giving him a model of the target pattern. Socoop's
mistake, of course, was to behave as if the question he was asked was a real question, and as if he really was expected to explain to the class his feelings about fatherhood.
--
From The Lexical Syllabus, By D Willis. Chpter 1.