Interview

Rod Ellis

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You've written quite a few books. Do you have a personal favorite, or one that may be a good introduction to your ideas?
My books have been written over a period of 17 years. The first one that I ever wrote was in 1984 called Second Language Classroom Development, which was actually a version of my Ph.D. Shortly after, followed Understanding Second Language Acquisition in 1985. I guess, in some ways, that was my most successful book. It's still sold and used quite a lot today, though, in many ways it is out of date. So, in some ways, I'm grateful for its success. If you're going to have an academic career you have to write successful books. So that book has a special place for me.

But as a starting point for our readers, what would you suggest?
There is a little book I wrote for Henry Widdowson's series in applied linguistics by Oxford University Press that is just called Second Language Acquisition. That is just a 90 page survey of what second language acquisition is about. That does a reasonable job in introducing what is now very complex field.

I read this a report written by Brett Reynolds on a seminar of yours in February 99 where you talk about a definition of a language task. Has the definition changed at all since then? Could you talk about learners being USERS rather than LEARNERS of language?

"Ellis asked those present to consider some definitions of a task proposed by other researchers. Once we had read them over, he proposed the following as hallmarks of tasks:
* A task is a work plan.
* A task involves linguistic activity.
* A task requires primary attention to be on message (cf. "exercise").
* A task allows learners to select the linguistic resources they will use themselves.
* A task requires learners to function primarily as language users rather than learners.
* A task has a clearly defined non-linguistic outcome."

That is one of the things I've been working on here at Showa, I've been finishing off a book for Oxford University Press which is called Task Based Language Learning and Teaching. It is an attempt to bring together all the kinds of research that have been done on tasks. And also all the work that has been done on task based language teaching. It provides a sort of account of these areas of work. The book should be published sometime in 2002.

This difference between users and learners of language that you have pointed out seems to be a very key difference, but one that is counterintuitive.
This is quite essential, I think for understanding the problems the Japanese people have about language learning because, ultimately, to be a successful language learner you have to be a language user. You cannot treat language like any other school subject, a set of facts that have to be memorized, or set of chunks and bits of language that you can perform. One of the things that is least satisfactory about the main textbooks that you find in Japan is that they are all predicated on the notion the Japanese students cannot produce their own sentences in English and therefore what we must do is in some way either give them the sentences that they need to use or, alternatively, simply ask them to finish off a textbook sentence.

That's not language use. That's the kind of thing you do as a language learner. When you are a language user, you must first formulate what it is you want to say about a topic, and then you have to find the language to try to say it as best you can. Now, everything that I know about second language acquisition tells me that you just cannot be successful unless you become a language user.

That's not to say that treating language as an object cannot also help you. I think it can. You can learn vocabulary and some useful chunks, etc. But ultimately you've got to be able to express your own ideas in English as well as you can so someone else can understand you.

It seems to me that is what Japanese learners have such enormous problems with. I think this is a product of the sort of Confucian educational system which basically leads to Japanese people envisaging language as a set of facts, a set of words, a finite number of grammar rules that if you master you will somehow learn the language. It just doesn't happen that way. So Japanese learners are just very reluctant to play the role of language user. They think you have to be a native speaker to be a language user. Otherwise, you have to be a language learner.

Another thing I find a bit depressing about the Japanese view is that if we are going to teach English what we must do is "get native speakers to do it for us because we Japanese are useless at languages, and so cannot possibly teach it to ourselves." Which is absolute nonsense. In most parts of the world it is nationals of the country that do the teaching. This is what we have in Germany, this is what we have in Spain, this is what we have in Zambia, this is what we have in China, mainly.

The Japanese have to take the responsibility. They can't in some way slough this off on native speakers. They have to take responsibility for teaching themselves. And they need to recognize that this is perfectly possible. But to make it possible Japanese learners of English have to learn to be users, and therefore they need textbooks and materials that encourage them to be users of the language rather than learners of the language, and such books are thin on the floor in both high schools and universities.

Thank you very much for your time, along with those stimulating ideas. You've rejuvenated a desire to look more closely at my teaching in this new and different light. Can't wait until your new book comes out.

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