Encouraging Learner Autonomy Through Presentations
Michel Bintener, Luxembourg
Michel Bintener studied at the University of Glasgow, graduated in 2006, started teaching in 2006, and is currently teaching at the Lycée Technique d’Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.
E-mail address: michel.bintener@education.lu
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Abstract
Literature review
Project implementation
Preparation and presentation
Results and conclusion
Selected bibliography
This pièce describes a series of presentations that were done by 11e PS pupils in June 2007. One of the goals of the project was to demonstrate the importance of communication in the L2 classroom; furthermore, it served as a means of introducing the pupils to the types of activities which they were likely to encounter during the rest of their secondary education. At the heart of this project was also the creation of a motivating learning environment that would allow the pupils to develop both their speaking and organisational skills and encourage autonomous learning, thus enabling the transition from a teacher-centred environment to a learning environment that focuses on the learner.
The creation of an environment which favours learner autonomy is a challenge for many student-teachers since they may have been exposed to a considerable amount of frontal teaching when they were pupils themselves. As a result, certain fallacious assumptions about the nature of teaching and the classroom environment have been made and now need to be reconsidered. As Leni Dam puts it:
In a teacher-directed teaching situation the teacher’s responsibility is traditionally to transfer information — school knowledge (…) — to learners. Teachers, learners and parents understand and accept this kind of responsibility. All three parties feel to a large degree secure in this situation. (Little, Learner Autonomy in the Foreign Language Classroom: Teacher, Learner, Curriculum and Assessment, p.138)
The question that a student-teacher needs to ask is therefore how he/she can make the transition from a teacher-directed teaching situation to a learning-centred learning situation. How can he/she make this unknown territory as secure as the familiar teacher-directed teaching situation? Put differently, how can the paradigm shift which the teacher intends to set in motion apply to him– or herself as well?
The attempt to answer these related questions represents a challenge on a professional as well as a personal level as it entails the deconstruction of a teacher’s function, both inside and outside the classroom. According to Dam, “the teacher must be willing to ‘let go’ so that her learners can ‘take over’ ” (Little, p.138), and this willingness implies self-reflection as well as a thorough and perhaps even radical revision of the learning environment. The previously mentioned transition can only take place if all the parties involved are open to changes and comfortable with a break from the age-old tradition of the teacher-centred classroom environment.
However, this break is problematic: the prospect of classes composed of autonomous learners seems to suggest that there is no longer a need for a teacher, for a person who passes on what is generally referred to as “school knowledge” to his or her pupils. In other words, autonomous learning is often considered synonymous with the abolition of the teaching profession, with a power struggle that is ultimately lost by the teacher, thus resulting in educational anarchy. This belief is fallacious, as David Little remarks in his appraisal of Dam’s achievements in the domain of constructivist teaching: “ (…) her pursuit of learner autonomy in no way diminished her role as teacher: at every stage she was responsible for stimulating and guiding her learners.” (Little, Towards Greater Learner Autonomy in the Foreign Language Classroom, p.6) The encouragement of learner autonomy therefore does not render the teacher obsolete; on the contrary, it actually reinforces the guiding function that is inherent to the teaching profession, even though it requires a psycho-pedagogical evolution on the teacher’s side. […]
Before a number of aspects can be considered in more detail, a general outline of the project implementation needs to be given. […] The project took place towards the middle of the third term. The timing for each presentation was as follows: ten minutes for the presentation itself, followed by a question and answer session discussing several issues raised by the speaker (which lasted roughly five minutes), and another five to ten minutes of general discussion to make sure that the rest of the class would be explicitly involved as well. Given this timing, two presentations were allocated to each lesson; the project was thus completed in ten lessons, or slightly more than three weeks (11e PS classes have three English lessons per week). The presentation was assessed according to the marking grid used in higher EST levels to evaluate oral exams and counted as fifty percent, i.e. thirty marks out of sixty, towards the third term’s final paper. The speakers were also required to hand in written reports of their presentations to allow a fair assessment of the amount of effort they had put into this project.
The prospect of giving a talk in English made a number of pupils feel uneasy and insecure since they had never presented in that language before. At the same time, they had already given talks in other subjects, most notably language subjects, a fact which was supposed to alleviate their nervousness and agitation. Thus, no detailed instructions were given; instead, the pupils were encouraged to build on their past experience and to treat presentations in English like any other presentation they had done before. The pupils were then presented with a list of topics, most of which are suggested in the Horaires et Programmes guidelines for 13e classes as potential discussion topics for the oral component of their school leaving exams. Since the topics mentioned on that list are fairly general, they tend to recur very frequently across the different language subjects, and this repetition affects the learners’ motivation in a negative way. Nonetheless, some pupils, mostly those whose writing or listening skills were more developed than their speaking skills, found the presence of these topics reassuring, as the familiarity with the topic allowed them to focus on form rather than content during the preparation of their talk. Others, however, were keen on choosing their own topic, an option which had been proposed as well, under the condition that they get the teacher’s approval first; this option resulted in a number of highly unusual and innovative presentation topics, such as “The Ascent of Buddhism in Western countries” or “Smoking, as told from the perspective of a smoker”.
This absence of a formal briefing, of a discussion of the structure of a presentation, is at the same time the strength and weakness of this stage of the project. One might argue that the fact that the pupils were given free rein concerning the topic of their presentation as well as its structure is a first step towards the concept which Little and Dam refer to as “learner empowerment”: the learner is made responsible for his or her learning, is allowed to modify the assignment to suit his or her needs and abilities and should therefore experience an increase in motivation, all of which should lay the foundation for a successful learning-centred learning environment. At the same time, the largely heterogeneous background of the organisational structure of the EST was not taken into account: the probability that the pupils had never learnt a single coherent way of approaching a presentation was very high, given the many different educational backgrounds present in that class. As such, telling the pupils to rely on a structure, the assimilation of which the teacher cannot be entirely sure of, seems inadequate and also inefficient in the process of reaching the established learning goals. […]
As such, the teacher cannot be entirely sure whether the students have actually assimilated the structures they have been taught, which makes the process inadequate and inefficient as far as reaching established learning goals is concerned.
[…] The benefits that arise when using presentations as a means of second language acquisition and encouragement of learner autonomy are therefore clear: the learner is required, even forced to act autonomously. He or she needs to develop a series of skills and eventually assume the role of a teacher, trying to present new information to his or her classmates. This very role reversal creates an opportunity for the learner to demonstrate his or her motivation and requires him or her to use language in a very precise, almost surgical fashion, which in turn favours the acquisition of a particular language through the very use of that language.
Little mentions that responsibility needs to be practised, and that mistakes are bound to happen during that practice; moreover, he adds that the participants’ sense of self-fulfilment is likely to increase if this responsibility is practised on a regular basis (Little, p.15). What is true of the project on a micro-scale level, i.e. the presentations themselves, remains true on a macro-scale level, which concerns the organisation and realisation of the project: even though a number of flaws manifested themselves throughout the project, the benefits are non-negligible and encourage the repetition of this type of activity.
Little, David, et al., Learner Autonomy in the Foreign Language Classroom: Teacher, Learner, Curriculum and Assessment (Dublin: Authentik, 2003)
Little, David, et al., Towards Greater Learner Autonomy in the Foreign Language Classroom (Dublin: Authentik, 2002)
Pritchard, Alan, Ways of Learning: Learning Theories and Learning Styles in the Classroom (Oxon & New York; David Fulton Publishers, 2005)
Spolsky, Bernard, Conditions for Second Language Learning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)
Ur, Penny, A Course in English Language Teaching: Practice and Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
Ur, Penny, Discussions that Work: Task-centred Fluency Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
The Methodology and Language for Secondary Teachers course can be viewed here
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