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...

[october]

Asking students (at any age) "what do you want to do?" can be a bumarang (you know - that Australian ancient weapon...) I think it's one of the great methods to use but it's our job to limit their answers, give them choices to make. Thats why I love the "jiggsaw" method. I use the method to stimulate choice making, something that they dont have alot of practice doing, after a few times, they get the point, and it makes it easier and more effective when i ask the "what do you want to do" question. I agree that giving them choices need Maturity, Awarness of social aspects as well as their own capabilities, these skills are perhaps obvious to us, but the students have to be introduced to this skills and some have a hard time knowing what to do.
In my classes, of almost 40 students, there are 5-8 learning disabled children, so this question would be very hard for them to answer and if i do decide to use a method using self choice i need to make sure that there are enough choices for all levels and learning styles. Don't forget that each student may have a different learning style and not every student wants to work by his choice but NEEDS to be told what to do.
Think about how some of you learned at school. what did you prefer?
How did you learn L2?

[Glenski]

[shmooj]

Student centred classrooms are, in my opinion, one of the biggest cons to come out of TESOL theory but anyway...

with group classes in Japan there is simply too much social stuff going on to get any realistic idea of what a single individual in that group wants. This is because they are almost totally concerned with what the others in the group might want. BUT, with individuals in a private situation, I always find they have a clear idea of what they want. Nine out of ten times they say "Practice my weak points" - well gee, really?

So while I direct the programme with my students and very rarely let them negotiate this, I will often create activities in class which rely on autonomy from the students for success. It takes a while to get them used to this but eventually it pays off. I get to sit back and watch them work which is great for reflection on their learning and they get to grapple with language either alone or with other learners.

But a whole curriculum doing this is, IMHO, a recipe for disaster, or, as Wolf said, farce.

[fat_chris]

[dreadnought]

Some posters objection to letting students decide on the teaching style/course content seems to be that they don't know what's good for them. The basic idea is that the students know what they WANT but they don't know what they NEED.

I think this assumes, however, that we as teachers DO know what they need to be successful language learners. But how many of us can honestly say that we do know this? How many of us do pair and group work not because it's something we believe genuinely improves their ability to use the language but because we were told to do it on our TEFL course? It's been drummed into us that teacher-fronted lessons are 'bad', yet there's no convincing research that suggests those kinds of lessons are any less successful than more student-centred approaches. In fact, millions upon millions of students have learnt foreign languages in those kinds of classrooms, which suggests there must be some kind of built-in success to them!

Which comes back to the question of what students want. Surely students are more motivated to learn when they are presented with a teaching style they are more comfortable with than one where they are forced to act and behave in ways that are unnatural for them? I'm not suggesting that we should always do teacher-fronted, grammar-heavy lessons; however, I think there are many ways in which teacher-fronted lessons can be more 'realistic' and 'authentic' than the routinised group/pairwork, jigsaw readings, 'find someone who...' type stuff of the so-called Communicative Classroom.

[dmb]

Do you practice what you preach? I've done teacher traing for CELTA and DELTA and witter on about student centredness, p/w, g/w, not trying to understand everything word, etc. So I go down this road when doing teacher training or development. However when I learnt turkish I Sat in a bar at night time with my grammar book and dictionary, after a few beers testing it out on the locals. So if my students prefer to learn like this I let them. It worked for me. We all have different learning styles. Why try to force a learning style on our students if they feel uncomfortable with it. Lower that effective filter!!!

[october]

The bottom line is that it all depends on who your students are, how old they are and how many of them are in the class.
DON'T forget what YOU want! and how you are most comfortable teaching, the students feel and recognize what you like as well.
The main thing to remember, I strongly believe, Is to be
flexible
Don't think one method is better than another.
Be as creative as you can when applying all methods.

And I'm talking like this because I'm on a week holiday... [/b]

[schwa]

How about student-centered within a teacher-determined context?

I like to approach my classes with a main theme &/or grammar point, do my teacherly explication thing, then as much as possible let the students generate the raw material we'll work with. Group brainstorming activities, for example, provide lots of opportunity for vocab review & correction, & fill the board with stuff the students want to work with.

Open-ended sentence beginnings are just so much more effective than any substitution exercises -- they make it personal, & students of different levels can take it as far as they can. A small example: I was born ... Middleschool students can practice simple where & when constructions, high-level can run with it. (I had a group of teachers really waxing nostalgic on this one this afternoon.)

The possibilities are endless, but in my experience the more straightforward the set-up, the more my students benefit. A lot of my best lessons have the exact same starting point, whether my students are beginners or near-fluent. Then my responsibility, as a poster above noted, is to remain flexible.

Couple times a year I ask my more advanced students what they want to learn & I get the usual spectrum of grammar, vocab, idioms, writing -- teacher-driven stuff, passive. I acknowledge their wants & offer up a little of it, but fact is, most of them already have too much arcane information about english & very limited working vocabularies they regularly trot out in butchered sentences. [Omigod a native speaker is talking to me -- brainfreeze!]

Student-centered is affiliated with comfort zones. Very useful, but ultimately self-limiting. You gotta nudge the students forward.