Accommodation Theory in Teaching

They say that a teacher’s first year in teaching is like passing a needle’s hole. We have to think of all the possibilities. We think that we are more advanced because we are the youngest and that we have all the energy and fresh ideas to survive it. We think that there will be no bends along the way. We think that there will be no frowns or that there will be a bed of roses waiting for us, but we’ll soon realize that these are just ideals.

            As we start working, we hold a jar full of idealism. We realize that as we go on and pursue this so-called passion, our jar of idealism is becoming lighter and lighter, losing a drop every step of the way. Every drop falls because of adjustments. We start to encounter things and these open our eyes the real structure of our educational system. Don’t get me wrong, there are good days of course, but the bad days make us reflect. This is comparable to language teaching as it offers good points for reflection.

            Accommodation Theory (Giles, 1973) describes how people adjust their language and communication patterns to those of others. Since its emergence in the 70’s, the theory has been used in the fields of social psychology and sociolinguistics.

The Accommodation Theory by Howard Giles  draws attention to the roles of socio-psychological attitudes, motivation, formal instruction, and larger community or environment in L2  learning.  And, the important features of this theory are embedded in the preceding variables.  First, the roles of socio-psychological attitudes and motivation in second language acquisition (SLA). Just basing on my first year of teaching, positive reinforcements makes a learner think. Students nowadays are in so much problems and troubles. Sometimes, they go to school not because they want to study hard but because they just want to escape or forget their problems at home. As teachers, giving them their deserved comfort is the least thing that we can help them. That comfort that we give them will serve as their motivation to at least be listeners. I think that to be able to learn, we should start as listeners. We just listen and think on our own. When teachers have already established the comfort that students need, these students will start reacting, asking and answering during discussions. If we consider the feelings of our learners, if we realize that there’s always a reason for their attitude, we can find a way to make them learn the target language.

            Second, the role of formal instruction in SLA is a sensitive issue.  Many language teachers fail to consider the importance of an accommodating lesson plan.  Formal instruction means the L2 is taught under the supervision of an institution (public, private and language school) and it is learned under prescribed conditions.  Meaning, the second language learners are taught by a qualified language teacher and uses books, manuals and other supplementary materials to ease L2 learning.  To me, the success of classroom learning is manifested through the activities done by the students in an untutored setting.  We try to see to it that the tools that we use in the classroom as our partners in teaching our learners should really help them. These instructions should be aligned with their level of competence or something that will really be beneficial to them.

    Third, the role of larger community or environment in L2 learning is imperative.  When there’s high exposure to the target language community, high proficiency also transpires.  When there’s no opportunity to mingle with the target language community, there’s low proficiency and the second language learners are not motivated at all. Interaction as said by Vygotsky is an important key to second language learning. In cases that we cannot immerse our learners to the second language community, for example an English-speaking community, we can do artificial immersion. We can let students watch English movies for them to be exposed and let them talk about the issues if the movie with English as their medium.

            There are many possibilities and so are points of reflection, we have to be smarter and be better than when we were in our first year of teaching.