[EDLING:1458] Indirectly Speaking / Giving responsibility to the learner

[Francis M. Hult]

Daily Yomiuri

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/language/20060414TDY14004.htm

Indirectly Speaking / Giving responsibility to the learner

Mike Guest Special to The Daily Yomiuri

Several years ago in Canada, before I decided to spend the rest of my life in 
Japan, I studied and worked briefly as a counselor. Counseling was the most 
difficult job I've ever had. Every day I was faced with people who were drug 
addicted, violence-prone, manic-depressive, suicidal, phobic, or suffering 
from compulsive behaviors. Facing such a barrage of in-your-face humanity on a 
regular basis eventually proved too much for me and I quit after barely a year 
on the job. But some of the skills I learned during my tour of duty as a 
counselor have left an indelible mark on my English-teaching habits. 

Did you know that one of the cardinal rules of counseling is not to give 
advice to patients? That's right. Giving advice makes the patient more 
dependent on the counselor. If given advice, rather than learning to recognize 
their own condition and developing ways of dealing with or treating them, a 
patient will passively wait for the counselor's advice like a magical cure, 
inadvertently initiating a trend where the patient becomes addicted to the 
counselor. In such cases, patients have not really been treated in a holistic 
way, but rather have received band-aid treatment or a "fix" of advice, and 
never learn to take responsibility for their own lives. 

I think this is true of language teaching also. A curriculum based upon 
feeding one's students a series of language items makes us "tellers" rather 
than "teachers" (I am often nonplussed at how often it is assumed that, as a 
teacher at a medical school, my job is to "tell" my students medical 
terminology). In a "telling" scenario, our students are likely to become 
passive and dependant, waiting for the teacher to tell them what to learn each 
day and how to learn it. Interestingly, although teacher-centered classes 
are "pedagogically incorrect" in current ESL/EFL teaching circles, many 
teachers--teachers who critique teacher-centered classes still fail to free up 
their learners for self-discovery. Perhaps teachers want to be in control and 
have the students depend upon them. It feels good. It makes the teacher feel 
useful, productive, needed, powerful. But ultimately it doesn't help the 
learners. 

We know that all learners learn in different ways. Some are better at 
absorbing rigid rules and systems, some memorize, some learn better 
holistically, and some take a more impressionistic approach. As a result, the 
manner in which any given teacher teaches is almost certain not to agree with 
the manner in which a number of their students learn best. 

Likewise, we know that that which is taught in a class is not necessarily that 
which is learned. In my course reviews I am often surprised (not always 
positively) at what my students claim to have gotten out of my classes--often 
not the teaching point or points that I had intended. I know of this 
incidental learning all too well because I have always been that type of 
learner myself. I have rarely taken lessons of any kind because my own 
learning agenda has often not corresponded with the course curriculum or the 
teachers' intentions. And when I have taken lessons I have found the 
instructors' teaching most effective if used as a guideline for my own 
practice and self-discovery, a personal process of testing and then rejecting 
or confirming hypotheses. 

These points present strong arguments against tightly controlled, top-down, 
centralized, rigidly structured, monolithic programs headed by individuals or 
committees in faraway offices. English teachers (or curricula) would do better 
to provide learners with skills for learning by themselves in accordance with 
the famous saying "give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him how to 
fish and he eats for a lifetime." 

After all, in most cases we will see our learners for a year, or maybe less. 
They can, will, and should continue to learn English even after they leave our 
classrooms. After all, learning something as ephemeral as a foreign language 
is a lifelong process. But are we equipping them with the skills to do so? 
Many learners do not know how to use a dictionary properly, or how to 
distinguish between peripheral and central language points. Many do not know 
English research methods, and many have no idea how to use the myriad, widely 
available language-learning tools in a constructive or productive manner. This 
may well be because we have made our learners teacher-dependent and tend to 
keep them that way. We have failed to let them take responsibility for their 
own education. 

The popular term used for a more independent approach to learning is "Learner 
Autonomy." Now, learner autonomy is more than a bland confirmation that we are 
all unique or special. It is, rather, a recognition that learning is 
multifaceted, and, if the educational content falls more on the acquisition 
side of the equation, it serves as an affirmation of support and guidance to 
the learner, allowing the learner to be an active player in their own 
development. 

It is also important to understand that this approach is not an excuse for 
teachers to be lazy, a chance to shirk responsibility. In fact, increasing 
learner autonomy might even mean more work for the teacher because one has to 
act as a guide, supporter, resource person, and fount of suggestions--direct 
or indirect--for various learner/learning styles. 

Nor does it imply a wholly unstructured anarchic classroom where everyone is 
doing their own thing and the students are running the ship. Rather than 
anarchy, one can carry out goal-oriented syllabi or curricula which allow for 
a variety of study/practice methods and flexibility of content (avoiding the 
traps of the "In this course you will learn these 500 words and 20 verb 
tenses" type of curriculum). 

Likewise, learner autonomy need not imply dubious approaches such as 
the "negotiation of syllabus" which (often faultily) assumes that the learners 
know what's best for them and how to best approach it. In fact, just the 
opposite is true, in helping learners to prioritize content and understand 
which study methods may be most effective, taking a learner autonomy approach 
provides a scenario where the guiding role of a teacher, as opposed to 
a "teller," comes into play. 

Moreover, this role corresponds nicely to ideal counseling methods for 
treating patients--being able to see where the patient is going and needs to 
go--but guiding the patient from behind. Ultimately then, anything gained from 
the process is achieved by the patient or learner themselves. They are taking 
responsibility for their own successes and are thus enabled to walk 
confidently on their own two feet into the future. Guest is an associate 
professor of English at the Medical College of Miyazaki University. He can be 
reached at mikeguest59 at yahoo.ca. 

(Apr. 14, 2006)