PRESENTATIONPRESENTATIONFSFI ConferenceFSFI Conference

1212thth May 2011 May 2011

Awareness - rather than perfection – in oral production

•Grammar for reflection on communicative acts, rather than neurosis about grammatical nicety.

•Need for pilots/ATCs to be aware of the language they are using.

•Current EFL pedagogy does not favour explicit metalinguistic instruction

Standard ESP pedagogy

• needs-based language competency training with more learner-centred pedagogical approaches

Refined Pedagogy

Enhancing pilots' metalinguistic awareness and especially for pilots whose L1 differs from

English as much as does Russian

No understanding of relevant grammatical structures

miscommunication …at least 11% of fatal airplane crashes worldwide in the period of 1982-1991 (Ritter, 1996, p. 7A)

Miscommunication

Code switching in a grammatical/syntax level

TenerifeDate: March 1977Fatalities: 583Injuries: 61Cause: Miscommunication

General lack of English Language Operational Proficiency

Kazakhstan Airlines‟ Ilyushin 76 Date: December 1972Fatalities: 351Injuries: 0Cause: Miscommunication

English Phrasal verb not understood

“What does „Pull up, pull up‟ means?”

Urumqi, China Date: November 1993Fatalities: 351Injuries: 0Cause: Lack of English

Use of ambiguous expressions/Problem with nuance in English

“landing priority,” , “fuel priority,” , “I think we need priority,”

AVIANCA Flight 52Date: January 1990Fatalities: 72Injuries: multipleCause: Miscommunication

Requires more than just that task specific competency.

High Stakes Communication Training

Requires an enhanced metalinguistic awareness.

Requires explicit emphasis on grammatical structures

Metalinguistic Awareness

Increases pilots awareness of potentiality for miscommunication

Provides pilots with ability to interactively eliminate possible miscommunication

Metalinguistic Awareness and Instruction

Currently EFL pedagogy dominated by Implicit instructional types

Explicit Instruction requiring rule explanation increases metalinguistic awareness

Explicit instruction should not be decontextualized from Target Language Situation

Metalinguistic Awareness and Pilots / ATCs

Explicit Instruction requiring rule explanation increases metalinguistic awareness

Increased metalinguistic awareness increases “noticing ability”

metalinguistic skills enable us to talk about language, analyze it, think about it, separate it from context, and judge it.

noticing ability is one of the crucial mechanisms in the negotiation process.

Will a new approach increase safety?

The Future