Page 33 - BRIDGES - ISSUE 7

An Account of B. Tomlinson’s Views on the Multi-Dimensional BIBLIOGRAPHY
Approach and the use of Literature in teaching Tomlinson,B.,1994,PragmaticAware-
ness Activities, LanguageAwareness,
«« Vol. 3, Nos 3&4, pp.118-129

the potential for more appropriate mental images generated by the text,
textsand activitiesfor thespecificstu- by expressing their feelings or even by Tomlinson, B., 1998, Affect and the
dents theyareintended.In manycoun- drawinga picture of what theyhad read Coursebook, in Arnold, G. (ed.) Af-
tries(Bulgaria,China,Indonesia,Ire- or listened to. In the third phase the fect in English Language Teaching,
land, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, learners are helped to deepen their IATEFL Newsletter
Norway, Romania, South Korea, Sri initial response and understanding of
Lanka,Singapore,etc.)groupsof writ- the text.Theygo over the text and they Tomlinson, B.,1999,Materials Devel-
ers produce local materials,which are add to their mental images or their opmentfor LanguageTeachers,MET,
content and meaning focused, text drawings.Theyenter intoan affective Vol.8, No.1, pp.62-64.
driven than language driven, and also interaction by expressing their views
authentic, lengthy and provocative. and thoughts concerning the content Tomlinson, B., 2000, AMulti-Dimen-
However, given the fact that there is of what has been presented to them. sional Approach, The Language
no perfect book for a particulargroup What then can follow is the text ex- TeacherOnline.
of students, teachers need always to ploitation, interpretation and aware-
step in to adapt or to produce materi- nessphases, inwhich attention isgiven Tomlinson,B.,2001,Materials Devel-
als for their students. on how particular thoughts are ex- opment, Draft chapter for:Carter, R.
pressed, what tenses or other gram- & Nunan, D. (eds.), The Cambridge
Nurturing an experiential matical phenomena are used to ex- Guide toTESOL
approach to the learning text press those thoughts and thus the
learners have theopportunity to real-
Story telling, story listening or read- ize thefunctionof grammar associated
ing, the use of poetry and of other to its use in context.
authentic material have the potential
to arouse emotions and lead to an ex- Surely B. Tomlinson’s ideas are not
periential approach and not a studial an easy recipefor an ideal method of
one,according to B.Tomlinson’s dis- teachinga foreign language.But I am
tinction. An experiential response to certain that in his thoughts about
a text takes place when it is read for coursebooks many of uswill recognize
enjoyment and without searching for our thoughts and our longing for
teaching points,as it happenswith the more interesting materials for our
studial approach.The teachercan de- classes.Heoffers a good guidance on
vise activities to facilitate learners in how toexploit anygood material that
having an experiential response to a we may come across and on how to
text. Tomlinson discerns three kinds motivate our students to participate
of activities in experiential reading: aswhole persons in our language les-
pre- response activities, whilst-re- sons. He shows us a way on how to
sponding activities and post-response incorporate literature in our teaching
activities.In the first phase the teacher focusing on the content as well as the
prepares the learners for the reading linguistic aspects. In his lectures he
experience by leading them togener- consoled us that we should not worry
ate thoughts relevant to the text he/ if it seems thatweare losing time with
she plans to introduce and bygetting activitiessuchasdrawing and imaging,
the learners to useinnerspeech to dis- playing and miming,or if thestudents
cuss relevant topics with themselves. do not learn all the words of an au-
What is important is that they activate thentic text. Hisown words were:"At
their minds, cither individually or the beginning it seems as if you are
through pair and group discussion. In losing time but in the end you gain
the second phase, which starts after time because you achieve deeper
thestudents have encountered the text knowledge".
for the first time, the learners are lead
to a multi-dimensional representation
of the text, through the creation of

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