Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 1; January 2001

(Republished from Network News, December 2000 with permission from the British Council.)

Rituals are very important - they support and structure every part of our lives. For example, in some cultures, making tea and coffee are complex ceremonies reflecting their particular societies. Likewise, in the classroom teachers develop standard behaviours which become part of their teaching style. These styles, though, should not become completely fixed as they may be inappropriate when put to use in a new or unusual situation. Myths in teaching influence both value systems, beliefs and expected behaviour.

This August I joined a British Council team in Tashkent where we ran a short course for doctors. They are doing lots of interesting projects in Uzbekistan - adapting coursebooks and video courses, writing whole new coursebooks specifically for the local situation and running carefully targeted ESP courses. Teaching in a new country with doctors as students was a novel and welcome experience which enabled me to reflect on my classroom rituals.

Verbal routine

In Warsaw I find myself starting every lesson with a variant of 'Well here we are: another lovely day in Warsaw (no matter what the weather may be doing outside). In Tashkent, every day was lovely so this little verbal routine lost its meaning and my whole comfortable rhythm was lost. I also tend to ask my Polish students how they have spent their time since the last lesson or ask them to ask each other and then report back to the class. Because in Tashkent we saw each other every day, this again seemed to lose its meaning: they always went home, cooked, ate, did their homework and slept. I spent less time on pleasantries in the lessons and we did more work. The question is: will I return to my comfortable routines when I start teaching in Warsaw again?

Reading aloud

TEFL seems to be particularly susceptible to myths. Take reading aloud for example. At some distant time in the late sixties or early seventies some bright spark methodologist suddenly announced that reading aloud should not be done in the classroom as native speakers do not read aloud. An inauthentic task - Heaven forbid! Everyone nodded in agreement and said 'Don't read aloud in the classroom,' and for over twenty years the prevailing 'wisdom' was that one did not read aloud in the classroom. I started teaching and was told that reading aloud was 'verboten'. I thought for a minute - native speakers do read aloud: horoscopes, newspaper articles, poems, etc. TEFL, as preached in the UK and on certificate courses of the time, was in the grip of a silly delusion. This made me very wary of conventional 'wisdom'.

Consider reading skills. The main skills are prediction (fair enough), scanning and skimming. Exams like FCE and CAE test these last two ways of reading at great length and coursebooks practise these skills even more. Scanning is, or should be, restricted to certain text types such as timetables or menus. I do not scan novels or poems as a rule - unless I am re-reading and looking for a particular passage (to read aloud to my girlfriend for example). Check what kind of text types demand scanning in exams - is this form of reading appropriate?

Skimming strategies

Skimming on the other hand is supposed to offer up the general gist of, say, an article. I do not use skimming as a strategy for reading newspaper articles, or novels for that matter. When approaching an article, I use the headline and pictures (if there are any) to decide if I will be interested and then, if I am, I start. I read the first paragraph. Strange that. It is also strange that the first paragraph has usually been specifically written to tell me the content of the article and to encourage me to read for more information: the key points will be there. I do not skim through for the general idea: absolutely not.

I do, however, skim - I admit it. But only under specific circumstances. I skim through a text when I am bored with it and am looking for something to capture my interest. When I skim, it is a sign that the author has failed.

So, I do scan (specific texts) and I do skim - to a limited extent and as a repair strategy; yet learners are taught and tested the skills at great length. There is also one great difference between my skimming and scanning and a learner doing the same; I can stop at any stage and be almost certain to understand any individual word. I am able to deploy these strategies because I can understand the text. Learners, though, are asked to employ them because they do not understand everything.

I would not employ these strategies on a very specialised text that I wanted to understand: I would read it with great care and attention. Most texts are specialised for our learners. Do we encourage our learners to do the same?

In my opinion the most important reading 'skill' is a very large vocabulary: teach your students more words and phrases and practise skimming and scanning less.

A teacher should be able to reflect both on his or her own classroom behaviour and on the dominant best practice which may in fact be nothing more than a myth and mistaken belief. Then maybe change his or her teaching.

(Thanks to Emma Tuhill who first got me thinking about skimming and scanning.)

Robert is a British Council teacher in Warsaw.