Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 3; May 03

Dr M.N.K. Bose, Republic of Yemen

One of the crises which modern men face is the loss of self-identity; this is due to several reasons. The most important of them is their failure to create their own meaning of life. The modern men's identity crisis makes them feel 'homeless' and leaves them depressed and most often the unfortunate result is destruction of self or others. Learners in EFL classes are no exception; the crisis of self-identity and low self-esteem is often the result of the teacher's callous attitude towards them. The learner-centered teaching methodologies have not improved the situation and the learners continue to be neglected in the classes. This is also due to the fact that teachers, on the pre-service courses, suffer from a similar crisis; the teacher education curriculum, in most of the universities in Yemen, where the author teaches, treats the teacher trainees as receptacles of solid information and gives hardly any respect to their views.

It is true that self-esteem is an important, though invisible, factor in the learning process. Learning is enabled if the learner's self-esteem is high and the teachers are advised to tune their teaching methodologies towards this end (Bose1986). The challenge is, therefore, is to harness 'the qualities that enable young people to act responsibly, autonomously and with respect for other persons in a world where new and unpredictable problems are arising, where the past is not in many cases an adequate precedent for future cases and where different perceptions of the problems and their solutions will need to be tolerated and respected' (Pring 1987). This becomes possible when teachers 'encourage the learners to think about themselves, their strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes and make choices informed by this self-knowledge, coupled with knowledge of the opportunities available' (Quicke1999).

Writing autobiographies is one of the possible ways of developing self-knowledge, as it is 'a part of an ongoing process of self-formation, serving as a vehicle for articulating, reflecting upon and analyzing the various threads of experience which we associate with ourselves' (Quicke1999). Wilkinson identifies an 'emerging objectivity about the self' in the writing of young writers of the age of 10 or so about themselves; they are 'self-critical and less egocentric' (1986).

'Write a paragraph about yourself' in the beginning of the semester enthused the learners in my undergraduate class, though the performance was not up to the mark; their writing was full of grammatical and lexical errors. But they had taken pains to express themselves, giving an account of their family, their friends and their future plans. A similar exercise in the middle of the semester has motivated them to talk about themselves in detail, though they were not given any clue to this end. Some of them have provided a closer analysis of themselves, with an account of how they chose their hobbies, their friends, their course of study; some others have been 'open' to give critical remarks about their own lives.

The feedback these exercises provide, to some extent, strengthens the developmental model of Wilkinson (1986) and supports my assumption that writing autobiographies will enhance the learner's self esteem, because the more self-critical and less egocentric the learner becomes, the more autonomous he/she develops, and autonomy in turn enhances self-esteem.

Self-esteem, as pointed out earlier, is an essential nutrient for learning and frequent occasions for the learners to write about themselves will nurture this most important but invisible factor.

Bibliography

Bose,M.N.K. 1986. 'Self-esteem: an Invisible Factor in Language Learning' Journal of ELT, Nov-Dec, 1986, Madras.
Pring, R. 1987. Implications of the changing values and ethical standards of society, in J.Thacker, R.Pring and D.Evans (eds) Personal, Social and Moral Education. Windsor: NEFR/Nelson.
Quicke, J. 1999. A Curriculum for Life. Schools for a democratic learning society. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Wilkinson, A. (ed.) 1986. The writing of writing. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Dr.M.N.K.Bose
Associate Professor of English
Faculty of Arts, Ibb.
Republic of Yemen
BOSE@y.net.ye