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[leeroy]

Thanks, guys, for your interesting comments.

Although I try to remain objective, and not become emotional about it, these elements of asian culture described above make me feel negative, and evoke a vast array of arrogant feelings of superiority. This has been brewing for a little while, apologies again for the gross generalisations..

Asian people's relative inability to function individually means they have less opportunity to develop initiative and independence. As Roger commented, they are like 'cogs in the machine', only playing a role defined for them by society with little scope for autonomy. They are not taught to be responsible for their actions, or essentially to "grow up" in the western sense of the word.

It is not a teachers' role to be an entertainer, and teachers cannot "learn" for the students. Asians feel uncomfortable in student-centered learning environments precisely because they have no desire (or ability) to take responsibility for their own learning. Teachers who encourage a student-centered approach with a focus on "free practice" unwittingly intimidate asian students - as the responsibility is now on them. For asians, this is 'breaking the mould', their identity as a student has changed and due to their upbringing they are not flexible enough to cope with it. As an English teacher I have been subject to degradation on many occasions, but I will never, ever, sing in a class for my student's enjoyment.

It is all very well to preach about being 'Student centered' and teaching 'Communicatively', but evidently this is a western concept tried and tested on western minds. Often, students don't want the lesson to be student lead. Asians are more comfortable with "Teacher talks, I listen" scenarios because it denies them any responsibility, and essentially makes their life easier.

If you analyse 'shyness' a little more deeply, it becomes clear that fear of losing face (or, put more directly, 'looking like an idiot') is responsible. They would rather say nothing than risk saying something wrong. Where does this belief come from? Do they think I will become angry, or make jokes at their expense when someone says "yesterday i go to pub"? It's safer just to repeat what the teacher says because there's no chance of getting it wrong...

This also explains their "collectivist" approach, of being the same as everyone else. No-one can critisize you if you're the same as a billion others. Essentially this is a fear of being independent, a fear of being characteristically "yourself" because you lack the strength of character to face critisism.

This represents an incredible level of insecurity, and narrowness of thought which strangles the potential of all students suffering from it.

Lots of other aspects of Asian culture seem to support their behaviour in the class. Their blanket discrimination (ie. racism and sexism) and obvious levels of class hierarchy clearly represent the lack of depth of thought present in their society. While such things exist in western culture as well, we recognise them as being negative, and are attempting to do something about it.

Western culture is introspective, we study ourselves and the ways we do things, and attempt to make them better. Asians are scared to do this for fear of discovering that their culture is inherently inferior. A loss of face, if ever there was one...

It has been quietly observed on many occasions that, generally, asians students like to talk abot shallow, meaningless shi*. Their obsession with gadgets, hairstyles and phones and incredible copycat culture is simple immaturity. Once they learn to cope with abstract thought, creativity, innovation, self-analysis, individualism, independence and responsibility for their actions then they will have matured. Their culture will have reached a point where ours is now. But they're not there yet.

Whew!

Rant over.

[scot47]

So is "student-centred learning" the only way to learn?
People have been teaching, learning and acquiring foreign languages for a long time.

I have fluent German which I certainly did not learn in a "student-centred" classroom. I am sure there are millions like me.

Maybe your assumptions about what is culturally important are not shared by your students ? Maybr you should adapt to a "teacher-centred" style !

[Steiner]

Scot, did you become fluent in German while in a teacher-centered classroom? I'm not trying to be sarcastic or inflammatory. I'm just curious.



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[scot47]

I studied German Grammar and you cannot do that in a "communicative" way. After getting School Certificate German, I continued to use it in a variety of contexts.

I cannot see that there is anything wrong with using old-fashioned methods which clearly work. How do you learn the Grammar of an inflected language communicatively ?

[leeroy]

Scott,

Yes, perhaps teachers are wasting their time trying to impose a 'student-centered' learning environment on cultures that are obviously incompatible with it.

In that case, Communicative Language Teaching and all that comes with it really gets called into question. I was certainly never told this during my CELTA! As the Chinese, Korean and Japanese education systems have proved, teacher focused classes rarely produce good communicators - and my own experience of learning French at GCSE also supports this.

That said, a student-focused classroom isn't the only way that people learn languages!

I am a firm believer that students hold as much (if not more) responsibility for their learning as their teacher. Asian students, evidently, do not share this opinion.

Are there any other approaches to teaching other than the Communicative Approach which are both accepted by asian cultures and yield results with regard to student's communicative ability? Until now I would have said 'no', but I've been wrong before!

[cafebleu]

With all respect to leeroy`s analysis of some general characteristics of Asian cultures (I would not disagree with you there), I think you are over-complicating the classroom dynamics or rather non-dynamics of teaching in Asian countries. Unless you are teaching genuinely high level English speakers then you are going to get limited conversations.

How many English teachers in Asia teach high level students as a matter of course? Few of us, I would guess. Most of us teach students who range from very low to low level to middle level in their English speaking competence. In Japan, while students tend to be more aware of others in class (and take into account seniority etc), I have found that if they do have something they want to talk about, they will do so IF they have the English vocabulary etc in which to express themselves, and if they are feeling comfortable.

Don`t forget confidence factors - confidence or the lack thereof is often a factor determining how well we native English speakers do when we speak in our host country`s foreign language. If I am relaxed with somebody then my level of Japanese can be quite good but if that person speaks in a local dialect mixed with standard Japanese or does not make me feel comfortable, then accordingly my Japanese ability seems to go down a notch or two.

It is also a matter of knowing when to use a good textbook. In the past I have had situations where the class goes nowhere because the level of the students is not high enough to sustain conversation for one hour or fifty minutes. You have to give the low and lower level students the tools to use. If they don`t have them, the class goes nowhere, floundering on the poor vocabulary and limited grammar of the students and the teacher ends up talking too much and the students feel dissatisfied.

It can be very frustrating teaching low/lower level students without a good text. I recommend that you never teach conversation only with such students. It is hard to drag anything out of them precisely because they don`t have the means to have a decent conversation or talk about anything other than in one word answers or boring, predictable answers.

[scot47]

I agree with eeroy that in CELTA and other courses they teach the dogma of student-centred classrooms with lots of pair work and group work.

As we often learn later, this does not always work. In some situations it is counterproductive and potentially disastrous.

But the prophets of the "communicative approach" insist that they know the sole path to linguistic salvation !

[Roger]

"Communicative approcah" is an interesting buzzword but hardly more! Where has it been coined? In the USA? And, how many Usanians become adequately bilingual??? Yes, they do try ever harder over there to make the life of a student easier. But if the student does not learn to overcome hurdles on his own he is not going to be a success! Through adversities does one become strong!
I completely agree with scot47 on "old" teaching styles. Snce the Western world has had the 1968 revolution, students have become the masters at school, and teachers are their servants.
I do not think along lines such as "teacher'centered" or "student'centered". This sounds to harsly like some polarisation. Both teachers and students should focus on the SUBJECT at hand and combine their efforts to make the student proficient at it.
The key to success has to be handled by both - the student should accept at least 51% of the responsability, the teacher up to 25%, with the remainder being shared by resources and circumstances!
Clearly, student-centeredness is an attempt at removing the student's responsability, and in East Asian societies he or she NEVER is responsible for their failure, especially their failure to acquire English!

[Sherri]

The communicative approach is considered to be a British innovation. I think anyone who has studied SLA is aware of this. Yes, it is true a lot of Americans are not bilingual (but a lot are too!) The trouble with the communicative approach is that it is not clearly defined, so people can create and change their definitions to suit the situation. I really don't think the communicative approach means it makes the life of a students "easier", if anything it makes it harder since there is more of a burden on the student to take responsibility for learning and to actually produce language.

People have different learning styles and what works well for one person, won't necessarily work for another. I think an important point is that no matter how you are taught a language, through the "communicative approach" or grammar-translation and the like, if you are going to become a proficient speaker, you have to use the language. Just sitting there and learning grammar structures / listen and repeat etc on its own is not going to get the job done.

[leeroy]

Sherri,

I agree completely! The communicative approach places more of a burden on students, as they have to be active participants in the class. This seems to be incompatible with the asian learning style - which is more of a passive "I'll just sit here and let the teacher do all the work" type thing.

[Capergirl]

It seems that we are struggling with different cultural approaches to teaching/learning in a classroom when it comes to Asian students. When I was teaching in Taiwan, I noticed how quiet my students were in the beginning and how reluctant they were to speak up. I was informed (by the director as well as my Taiwanese co-teachers) that in Taiwan, children are expected to sit quietly during class and listen to the teacher. "Participation" basically means to keep your mouth closed and keep your eyes to the front of the classroom or on your textbook. In the Western world, we tend to think of participation as speaking up, volunteering answers, and asking questions. However, the children I taught in Taiwan were young enough to adapt to my Western style of teaching and eventually opened up more and more in the classroom, especially those who had spent a few months or years in a Western country like Australia or the U.S. (there were quite a few of those). I now teach adults at the university level in Canada, and I find the Asian students (mainly Chinese students) are not as willing or able to adapt to the Western methodology as my young Taiwanese students were. The phrase "pulling teeth" comes to mind.

[Roger]

Capergirl's experience with young taiwanese is mine with Chinese learners. There is absolutely no need to put up with Asian passiveness and backwardness in classrooms if expats are to perform a job well. We should have a professional conscience and commonsense, and both of these qualities would disagree with local teaching methods.
Our employers ought to take this into account, or refrain from putting us in front of their clients!

[Wolf]

I agree. From day 1 I expeced my students to actively participate in class. I told them "we meet once a week for 80 minutes, for 4 months. If you want to improve in that time, you have to participate. It's they only way."

It worked, mostly. My stuents particpate well in class discussions and pair work. Small group work is dicey; they'll often do it in Chinese if I don't watch them like a hawk.

But they participate.

In Japan, I had less control over the classroom. By that I meant that I worked in a private langauge school. My students were told flat out that they wouldn't need to work in order to learn a language, they could simply learn by being close to the native speakers. Yeah. I lived near an Iranian family for 20 years. Go ahead - ask me how much Faree I know. Some students did take the initiative for their own improvement, and they improved the fastest.

[scot47]

The myth of learning just by being exposed to a native speaker is widespread. So is the myth that you can buy a language like you buy a kilo of cheese. Both myths are encouraged by langiage "schools" which sell a commodity.

Learners have to learn, but that does not mean that it has to be through the communicative methood, pair work and small group work !

[Sherri]

Some students here in Japan think that just by paying the tuition, they will become better English speakers--I guess kind of like people who feel fitter just by joining the gym--but never actually go.

At the school where I work (private language school) we are very honest from the start. We tell the applicants straight off in the model lesson or in the interview that if they don't put in the effort they won't learn. We try to weed out the people who just want a lecture. Once we had a woman who signed up for a listening class because she thought that would mean that she wouldn't have to speak!

One advantage to teaching all Japanese students is that we can spend the time at the beginning of the term training them on how to find their own personal learning style and how to be responsible for their own learning. We also have to focus on very basic skill building like how to make an outline or how to have a discussion since these are things they have never had to do in their native language (at least in the same way we expect in English). It is actually quite interesting to see the transformation. But like I said we do have an advantage because the students all have the same learning problems, we have fairly small class sizes and all the students are there because they want to be there--motivation is high.