Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Implications / 181

use a specific methodology (Larsen-Freeman,1983), one can note how the
ZPD model would be helpful in explaining sone of the contradictions
teachers feel when they bring together their own conceptions, the syllabi
proposing a communicative approach and the constraints of the classroom:
- the role of school would be clarified and the importance of teachers'
specific competence emphasized while at the same time teachers could
study the learning process in the home as a model for some aspects of
their teaching;

- the relationship between input and interaction and between accuracy
and fluency would be conceived in dialectic terms, with the teacher
taking principled decisions on error management, use of Ll in the
classroom, selection and appropriate use of texts for language
practice, types of interaction appropriate for fluency development
etc.;

- hopefully, the teachers' own attitude towards the L2 as 'high language'
would be modified as the complexity and cognitive value of the Ll
would become evident through studying the pupils' ways of learning it
at home.

6.3.3 Translating culture into education

Ethnography can be conceived as a method where three aspects of Inquiry
are united: a contrastive insight, the seeking of specific information and
a general interpretation (Hymes,1982). It is in this light that it becomes
relevant to teacher education, not in the comprehensive or topic-oriented
procedures of classic ethnographic descriptions (see page 12); it retains
the principles of systematic observation and hypothesis-oriented
investigation of early work, but these are characteristics shared with
other methods of inquiry, while its criterion of validity is distinctive:

For ethnographic enquiry, validity is commonly dependent on
accurate knowledge of the meanings of behaviors and institutions
to those who participate in them. (Hymes,1982:25)

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