Humanising Language Teaching
Year 1; Issue 5; August 1999

"Learning Teaching on an Academic Course"

Peter Grundy, University of Durham

Page 1 of 2

For the third year running, I've just spent a week of my Christmas vacation writing letters to the 42 students who opt for our English Language Teaching course as one of the twelve finals modules in their Linguistics and English Language degree. At the end of the first term of their continuously assessed course, they write two letters. One is addressed to me and describes their previous language learning experience, which they evaluate in relation to what they have learnt about methodology during the previous term. The other is addressed to one of their former teachers. This letter tells their teacher about the course they are taking at the university and makes some suggestions for possible changes in the teacher's methodology. These letters are the first of the two summative assignments on which the students are assessed.

I'm not going to betray any confidences by telling you how wonderfully moving and how very perceptive the letters are. But it's particularly enjoyable to read the letters of students who are only now discovering things about the teaching they experienced on a daily basis in the past. And I see how the folk tradition of passing teaching techniques from one generation to another is challenged by asking students to evaluate their own learning experiences in this way. As I write back to each student, every single one of my 27,000 words responds directly, not to the form, but to the content of the apprentice writing I'm evaluating - a rare occurrence in the language learning world.

You'll have got the idea by now - loop input. The methods used to teach the course content and even to assess the students provide techniques for them to evaluate as potential teachers themselves.

In virtually every case, the students' previous language classroom experience has been only as learners. And, as I discover from their letters, it has not usually been a humane experience. Next year some of them will start work as teachers without the benefit of any live teaching practice at all - usually (but not invariably) in classrooms overseas. I want them to go to their jobs with a humane perspective and with the widest possible set of methodological and practical options available to them. The purpose of this short article is to describe one or two of the activities we do in the first term of the course and to invite further suggestions based either on your intuition or on your experience working with students on similar courses.

The issue: How we can ensure that intending teachers for whom a methodology course in an academic environment serves as the only 'training' they receive do not take as a model their own (frequently demotivating) experience as learners?

The constraints: One two-hour session each week for two terms and then five three-hour sessions in a single week in the third term. In the first term I work on methodology and syllabus design, in the second on skills, language learner levels, activities and materials. In the third term, Paul Davis works on classroom practice - he provides a starter kit of ideas that the students know will work because they've tried them with him.

Given the word limit, I'll describe only some of the ways we work with some of the texts the students are asked to read in the first term of the course. I expect the students to read, not only because it's an academic course taught in a university but also because the students don't know much and ought not to rely only on a biased and partially informed teacher. But I also want them to get the message that even when we are reading academic texts, we can be trying out techniques which we can transfer to the language learning classroom.

So when I want them to read about audiolingualism, for example, I start with a handout listing the 17 "observations" or techniques Diane Larsen-Freeman witnessed in audiolingual classrooms. I ask the students to decide whether each technique has a positive or negative effect on learning or whether, in their opinion, there's no effect one way or the other. I divide the blackboard into 17 squares. (Yes, we are still green here and haven't gone over to the chemical poisons and whiteboards so beloved of business English centres.) Each student writes their verdict on each technique in the appropriate square so that everyone can see at a glance how typical their position is. A discussion follows. And then I ask the students whether they ever got to hold the chalk and write on the board in their language learning classrooms at school. And whether they ever got to see how their opinions compared with those of their classmates. And whether they got to invest something of their own as a basis for a discussion. And how what we've been doing could be adapted for language learning classrooms. In this way, the methodology that underlies what we have done together can be seen to contrast markedly with the audiolingual method which is the content part of our 'lecture'. They can now read Larsen-Freeman's chapter and set the method she describes in a broader context.

I introduce Richards and Rodgers's chapter on audiolingualism by selecting six extracts which define kernel features of audiolingualism. The class divides into six groups. Each group gets a different extract to study. Each extract appears under the following rubric: "You have just taken over as head of research and development at a private language school. What appears below is an extract from your school's brochure. Your task is to rewrite it, deleting anything you don't agree with and replacing it with more appropriate material." When each group has completed this task, they get to choose the name of a fruit for their group. Then the jigsaw begins - the groups reconstitute as fruit salads, with one of each of the fruits in the salad. The new groups share the different information that each member brings with them. When this is done, I ask the students whether they ever got to delete or re-write anything written in the target language in their language learning experience. And whether they ever did a jigsaw activity. And whether they ever got to choose a name for themselves. And so on. And how they think the things we've being doing could be used in or adapted for a language classroom. Once again, the techniques we have used can be seen to contrast with those described in the text we have been reading. In this way, we're getting two for the price of one - academic knowledge from a text and teaching methodology from our experience.