Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 5; September 2000

"For we can avoid ineptness or emptiness in our assertions only by presenting the model as what it is, as an object of comparison - as, so to speak, a measuring-rod; not as a preconceived idea to which reality must correspond."
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 131

For the teacher:

Comparing ourselves with others is an important means for us to check that we are comfortable with who we are and what we believe. It allows us to compare our model of the world with that of others. Making comparisons can also help us move away from models of the world which we don't like, and move towards one we're happier with.

For the classroom:

1. Ask your students in pairs or groups to think of someone who has been or who is a 'measuring-rod' or role model in their lives. Perhaps someone they compare themselves with. Or someone they look up to. This could be their mother, father, brother or sister, work colleague, friend or partner. They do not have to name them - they can call their measuring rod 'person A'. Do your students compare themselves with all aspects of that person? Or only some?

2. Have your students' role models changed over the years? Who did they look up to and measure themselves against when they were a young teenager, or an adolescent, or at university, or in their twenties, etc.? How do they feel now about their former role models?

3. Do your students have an 'ideal' of themselves which they compare their 'real' self with? Do they ever say to themselves 'I wish I …', for example? Or they might have an ideal of themselves in 5 or 10 years' time. How do they think they could get to their ideal?

4. Ask your students whether there are other people who look up to, or measure themselves against, them? Who are they? What do they see in your students? Did your students ever dream of doing something that they can do now - something that others would look up to?

5. What about in language? How well would your students like to speak English? What is their measuring-rod? Is it a person they know, or is it a 'level of ability' which they'd like to get to?

6. Has this linguistic measuring rod shifted over time? What was their first linguistic ambition when they started learning English? Can they remember? Often students want to be able to read the newspaper, to understand the radio, to be able to talk to native speakers. These goals may well have been gained already. Can your students do now what they aimed at when they started? Are other students aiming at what they can do now? What is their goal now?