Job Discussion Forums

[leeroy]

As the trend for 'learner centredness' continues, it is now 'cool' to have the students decide lesson content; what and how they learn.

The idea is, I suppose, that the students will be more responsive to the language and teaching style that they have chosen than whatever is imperialistically imposed on them by a teacher or syllabus.

Sounds fine in principle, but (in my experience) often students don't know what they want/need to learn. My own experience of learning languages has taught me this - I knew I needed to improve, but didn't know what I needed to know. It is my job to assess their English ability/ies - and judge what and how to teach accordingly.

Anyway, I thought I'd give it a go, so yesterday I got my Upper-Intermediate class to plan today's lesson. They were in three groups, each deciding what would happen in a third of the lesson.

Group 1 wanted extended practice reading aloud, "From a newspaper or magazine article - something difficult". Well, I stopped getting students to read aloud long ago, having deemed it pointless. Nevertheless, I photocopied an article from The Economist about Iraq and WMD, that frankly, they stood no chance of understanding. Nevertheless, they read it out with gusto.

The sound of Japanese, Russian, Spanish and French accents all chorusing out "..inferring the coalition's case for regime change, was in fact, vindicated by the interim report..." was a strange one, made even stranger by the fact that the students comprehended none of it. But they loved it. To make myself feel better, we focused on some words they had difficulty pronouncing post-recital.

Group 2 wanted me to explain everything I knew about conditionals, with "just you talking and us listening". (Again, the "grammar lecture" is not something I seriously consider these days.) So, I rattled on about 0, 1, 2 and 3 conditionals, and how these days it's better to call them rea/unreal, past/present/future conditionals etc... I lectured on about If+past perfect, would+present perfect, the students vigorously taking notes and asking the occasional question.

(Group 3 wanted a reading, with extracting and reprocessing lexis - which was actually pretty cool - and out of context for this post.)

I asked my students what they wanted, and they said recital and grammatical theory. The exact opposite, in fact, of what western language teaching tells us is "good". My CELTA/DELTA tutors would have shot me.

Why? I had commited two of the worst sins a TEFL teacher can do! And the students loved it. Well, I have a theory...

Communicative Language Teaching, pair-work, etc..., it aint all that.

It's OK, but sometimes we should be teachers, not language learning facilitators. Pair work can be overdone, STT doesn't have to be that high, and sometimes students don't want to discover language. They want to be force-fed it.

With an advanced exam class, we were about to do a reading about holiday stress. In a moment of clarity, I was brutally honest with them.

"I suppose I should get you to talk with your partner about 'any stressful experiences you've had on holiday' in order to create a context - but I can't be bothered. Just read it." There were audible grunts of recognition, and a couple of smiles.

"It's boring all this talk with partner stuff" they argued, "we just want to do it. And teacher always asks us questions, why? We are students! We ask questions, not teacher!"

(Presumably, they were referring to elicitation.)

The "Teacher is the boss, students listen and sometimes repeat" thing I appear to be advocating is (rightly) considered to be the devil by many of you working in Asia, where it is commonplace. I am not suggesting a return back to this style of education, rather that it is safe to push towards it sometimes.

Student centred and communicative? It's nice, but not essential!

[Gordon]

Great idea.

The problem about teaching in Japan is that if I got my students to choose or decide what I'd teach them, they'd stare at their feet for the whole lesson. It would mortify them and they'd think I was a terrible or lazy teacher for not telling them what to do and deciding for them. But, it would be great fun if they'd go along with it.

[dduck]

It's very different in the Latin world. With some of my more advanced classes, I've asked them what they would prefer to do: grammar lessons, or conversation. Unsurprisingly, students here always choose conversation when given a choice. In one of my last classes we brain-stormed around a dozen topics, I paired them up and they were off, happy as pigs in mud.

I don't have much experience of asian students, but I'd still like to see any upper-intermediate student being able to handle a spontanious conversation. I personally think, students need to be pushed out of the 'learning grammar is language learning' rut as early as possible.

Iain

[lajzar]

[Wolf]

One of the great problems with student input (needs analysis) into syllabus design is that they often don't have the vocabulary and/or concepts of how language is really learned.

Having a teaching talk about grammer and the students listen is very teacher-ish sounding. However does it work, I wonder? Having the students not try means less work for them. However it's been my experience (and everything I'm reading now attests to this) that the more personal effort you put into langauge learning, the more you get out of it. I don't think that anyone believes that langauge learning is a soley "passive" process anymore.

That being said, focusing on what the students feel they are not comfortable with yet is also important.

Not all classes can be student centered all of the time. Some converational schools in Japan have a "student centered" approach that is farcial.

It is up to the teacher (and the students and school to some extent) to decide upon an approach. No matter what we choose, however, we remain "teachers" - so long as our choice is made on good judgement and is in the best interest of our students.

[denise]

Leeroy--congrats on what sounds like a successfully risky venture. If I ever tried anything like that (and I have been tempted, just to see what would happen...) I bet I'd get a response much like what Gordon mentioned. The most I've ever done is taken an occasional vote:

"Who wants to keep practicing the reading text?" (2 Ss raise their hands)

"Who wants to review the vocab?" (2 Ss raise hands)

"OK, what do the other 12 of you want?!?!?" (12 Ss stare at the floor)

I agree that sometimes the communicative approach is over-rated; I think the teacher needs to have a modicum of control, and, when necessary, does need to stand there at the front of the room and explain.

That said, though, I also think it's dangerous to ALWAYS do what the students want. As other posters (and you, leeroy) pointed out, they don't know what they want. They know what they're used to, and what a "typical" language class should look like--for the Asian students, it's a teacher'centered, teacher-fronted grammar lesson. Not having been exposed to other approaches, the students may not even know that there is another way. They translate grammar all day, they know they can't speak the language terribly well, yet they do not see the connection... So they ask for what they know.

In another recent thread, the issue of parents' wishes came up--parents wanting their kids to start studying English at the age of 3 yrs/6 mos/still in the womb/etc. Just as many of these parents don't know anything about the language learning process, many students don't, either. It's a nice idea to give them a choice, but I'd still try to steer them towards choosing what I thought would help them the most, even if it is out of their comfort zone.

d

[Roger]

A great topic!
And, yes, I totally agree in saying it's questionable, even downright objectionable to empower students in such a way - choosing what they want to do requires MATURITY and an AWARENESS of what they need.
Learning a language in the controlled situation of a classroom requires COOPERATION, a MIND that's set on doing things the way they need to be done. How can our learners KNOW what they need to learn, or how to best achieve their goals?
My Chinese students do not have the intellectual power, the inquisitiveness and the open mind to do things in a responsible way.
They like nothing better than being led, cajoled, entertained, pleased. They react bodily, not intellectually to anything I do. A smile, clapping hands, or a scowl, arms linked in front of them in a defensive pose - how can I make them act the way I did when I was a student studying French, German and Latin?

Especially here in China, the best that could happen to my students is not when I do what THEY want, but when I get them to doing what I want them to do!
And that's a whole different story...