Danger in humanistic business english teaching

Dear Editor,

Is humanistic teaching based on the idea that the 'whole person' should be taken into account in the teaching situation? In this context, how far does the concept of the 'whole person' extend? My feeling is that the concept is generously large and potentially humane in its outcomes, but that it seems a bit static. What I mean is that it focuses on the person as a solid entity rather than as the ever-changing bundle of responses we teachers (who are also constantly changing) meet and engage with during our 'teaching'.

It is of course essential that we as teachers take into account that a student has a family, a life story, anecdotes of triumphs and disasters, a character, a way of learning, certain particular mental/emotional/physical capacities, but does this mean that we should, as a matter of course, use personal details as the content of our lessons? Can't we show our humanity as teachers better by respecting privacy while leaving open the possibility for a more personal exchange is both parties want it? People can really get high about balance sheets They don't necessarily have to relate the language they're learning to something we might term 'personal' for it to stick in their minds.

Your question about whether we consider ourselves 'humanistic' teachers has made me look at some of the problems I've had in my teaching of executives over the last few years.

PROBLEMS

Frequency of telling leads to erosion of meaning.

If private and personal anecdotes and details etc. are used regularly as part of the lesson plan of a language class they become devalued for the teacher when he/she tries to introduce them in conversation with friends. The teacher loses contact with important images of his/her own life.

The right time, the right place, the right person?

The meaning, for speaker and listeners, of a personal expression of feeling derives in part from the interpersonal context. We decide to speak about our children e.g. because we trust that the listener values, empathises with us. It there is no such reciprocation, the discrepancy in values results in demoralisation for the speaker, the sense of having what one values made light of.

People of goodwill coerced?

For a teacher to bring up personal matters in a classroom situation is to bring to bear an element of coercion on the listeners to reciprocate when they might not want to. This is because, as in some sense, the leader of the social group that is the class, the teacher sets the tone and topic for the group.

A temptation.

For teachers of specialists, the temptation to discuss the personal is strong as the teacher is an expert at least on these areas whereas trying to use the vocabulary and concepts of the student's specialism may render the teacher less than fluent. When the teacher can't maintain good conversation about pelagic eco-systems or double-entry bookkeeping, there is pressure to fill the embarrassing gap with talk about one's personal life. It causes the student embarrassment too, especially it they feel obliged to reciprocate.

The inflexibility of the lesson plan.

In a natural conversation (whatever that may be!) speakers move into and away from potentially sensitive areas in response to the reactions of others. In a class, the topic for subsequent discussion is often set by the teacher, so it might take an unusually strong act on the part of the student (a major rebellion in social terms) to get the topic changed if it is too personal. Since one of my students told me that one of his relatives had been seriously injured in a car crash, I haven't done the lesson in which people recount an accident that they have been in.

Levels of discourse.

To be able to tell the story of one's life is quite a different thing from being able to speak about the state of the Russian economy. The former is something everyone can do, the later is the realm of the knowledgeable and educated. If the teacher relies on the former overmuch, he/she is condemning him/herself to the role of know-nothing who may then begin to feel unworthy of the conversational company of high-flying executives. This is a source of the infantilisation I detect in our proceedings from time to time.

Victims of curiosity.

By allowing or encouraging personal topics to be used for an end external to the development of a personal relationship, has one adversely affected the ability of both interlocutors to control the conversation or to limit the possibly idle curiosity of the other? (In any case, language teachers are often guilty of initiating an unfeeling pattern of conversation akin to interrogation because we tend to introduce question forms as a seemingly neutral grammatical item, but end up being intrusive because we're focusing on the form, not the overall social and personal context - this is a problem of the structure-based syllabus rather than the specifically humanistic one.)

Topic calls up context and context calls up feeling.

There are certain circumstances in which certain topics are spoken about - guilt about 'sins' in confessionals, personal psychological difficulties on the psychiatrist's couch, one's deep feelings with confidants or friends or spouses. Also there are certain states of mind in which certain topics are spoken about - when you're depressed, drunk, angry, ecstatic things have a different slant and you use different words to express this slant. There is the possibility that these states of mind or particular circumstances will be evoked in the minds of the interlocutors when topics associated with them are focused on, and this may be overwhelming for both parties. The student may temporarily see the teacher as a confidant for example. But, in retrospect, will the student see the role of 'language teacher' as a suitable recipient for his /her confidences? Will the student not wonder later why such personal information escaped his/her lips to a comparative stranger? On the teacher's side this is difficult to deal with too. It the teacher were a trained counsellor; he/she might have developed strategies of coping more effectively with highly charged emotional utterances.

SOLUTIONS

Each of the above problems needs individual consideration in terms of how it can be counteracted but in a general sense the single most powerful way in which I have learned to deal with these problems is to assert my professional and personal rights. In a so-called 'service' industry such as EFL it may be difficult to develop a sense of rights. But I believe that such a development leads to a more humane form of teaching and a more effective way of encouraging learning both in the 'student' and the 'teacher'. A person with no rights becomes an infant and hence unable to take part in a mature and therefore effective conversation (Latin: infans = unable to speak). Our students are, in general, looking for an equal with whom they can communicate. If the role of the teacher is seen as pandering to every whim of the student rather than offering professional advice on language learning, then the dialogue between equals breaks down to the loss of both parties.

Best wishes,
Robert Feather

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to John Morgan's article, mainly because I heartily sympathise with the unfortunate offender asked to roleplay an apple. If the offender did not understand the reasons behind being asked to perform the part of an apple in a role play, then my conclusions would be that either a) the reasons were inadequately explained by the teacher or b) there weren't any strong reasons for the roleplay. Perhaps the young offender felt insecure and threatened by the nature of what he was being asked to do, and reacted by walking out. Is that the offender's fault? The above example has a great deal to tell us about how students might feel when asked to perform exercises which they do not clearly see a meaning for.

I have been using many of the exercises from the Pilgrims/Longmans series in my classes and from a variety of other 'alternative' sources (Dufeu/Maley & Duff/ and a variety of drama practitioners) too, for as long as I have been teaching English and continue to do so. But these days I use these kind of activities much more thoughtfully and with a readily-identifiable objective for myself and the student in mind.

To take John's example of the shoe and the chair exercise: in this situation I would start off the class by asking students to perhaps perform a role play where in real life they might be called upon to use question forms, perhaps meeting a host family for the first time, a first date and so forth. Should the students at this stage reveal themselves to be in need of some presentation of question forms, I might show them a 'real' text to compare their production with the real world, and then perhaps go on to some presentation of the areas they most needed work on. If I then decided that the chair and shoe exercise was one that the students could use to practise their question forms, I would certainly do it. If a student were to ask me why they were being asked to perform the exercise, I would clearly be able to tell them why. At the end of the class, I might well return to a role play where, in the real world students would be required to use these questions forms once more. There are many other excellent implicit reasons for using these kind of techniques, but a clearly-defined, explicit function or notion is one that may help to keep a student secure, even when entering territory which for them might appear strange and unfamiliar.

The issue of security and self-esteem is of critical importance in a group situation, and these type of activities are the very kind that may throw both of those issues to the top of a student's agenda. Shouldn't teachers try to help students navigate their way through these uncharted waters by giving them something tangible to float on?

Yours sincerely

Ian Reade
Cultura Inglesa
Brazil