Род Эллис: Тіл білімі және оқыту әдістемесі сарапашысы

New Zealand linguist

Rod Ellis is a Kenneth W. Mildenberger Prize winning British linguist. He is currently a research professor in the School of Education, at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. He is also a professor at Anaheim University, where he serves as the Vice president of academic affairs. Ellis is a visiting professor at Shanghai International Studies University as part of China’s Chang Jiang Scholars Program and an emeritus professor of the University of Auckland. He has also been elected as an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Ellis began his post secondary education at Nottingham University where he obtained an undergraduate degree. He received a Master of Arts from the University of Leeds, a Master of Education from the University of Bristol, and a doctorate from the University of London.

After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Ellis moved to Spain where he taught at a Berlitz language school before returning to London to teach at an elementary school. In 1967, Ellis moved to Zambia where he taught for 3 years. Following his first masters degree, Ellis returned to Zambia as a teacher trainer. Ellis then went on to teach linguistics and TESOL as St. Mary's College in London.

Ellis maintains that the distinction between form focused instruction and meaning focused instruction lies in how language is perceived and the role of the student. The former is concerned with drawing the student's attention to linguistic form (including, but not restricted to, vocabulary and grammar) whereas the latter focuses on conveying messages. In taking note of the reconceptualization of focus on form by other scholars, notably Michael Long, Catherine Doughty and Jessica Williams, Ellis distinguishes between planned and incidental focus on form. or reactive; can include implicit negative feedback or explicit negative feedback. The effectiveness of form focused instruction depends on multiple variables, such as the linguistic items being taught, the learners' developmental stage, the instructional context and instructional materials. Ellis suggests that explicit corrective feedback can be useful in the syntactic and other grammatical understandings in the target language by asserting and demonstrating the type of mistake produced in an utterance. Ellis refutes this claim by explaining that he clearly distinguishes a task from an activity in his works. One of the main ways in which Ellis distinguishes a task from an activity is by arguing the usefulness of each in regard to communication fluency for a task and correct form usage for an activity. Ellis has also contested Paul Seedhouse who argued that such a method could result in pidginized language, to which Ellis claims that it depends on the nature of the task. This method of teaching (TBLT) has been considered by William Littlewood as too difficult for beginner students. The view that Littlewood has against Ellis's TBLT method is that the required knowledge of the target language must already be at a fairly proficient level in order to complete the tasks being carried out. Another scholar, David Block, praises Ellis' task based method as being inventive, however, similarly to Swan, Block defines Ellis' approach to language teaching heavily theoretical, with Ellis not mentioning how long a TBLT course should be or the maximum number of students it can support in a single class.

2005 Principles of Instructed Language Learning. Volume 7 Asian EFL Journal. 2007 Educational Settings and Second Language Learning. Volume 9 Asian EFL Journal.