Hi guys!
Welcome to part 2 of The problem with English classes, where I go deep into the major obstacles that impede a learner’s progress in a classroom environment.
Today, we’ll be looking at the role of the teacher, and that of the learner.
If you haven’t read the first part, or simply want a recap before getting into the second instalment, click here to read part 1.
Last week we looked at how classroom teaching material runs the risk of being irrelevant.
How can we overcome this?
The obvious answer to this is, “Well, I’ll just have one-to-one classes then everything will be relevant to me!”
In a one-to-one class, the attention is 100% directed at you, but that doesn’t mean 100% of the material the teacher uses in the class is relevant to your needs.
Classes can be, and should be, very powerful learning environments.
Often, the problem is that teachers are not very good at finding out exactly what each learner needs.
Why?
Because people are not very good at looking inside their own heads, at finding out what knowledge they already have, the language they need, their strengths and weaknesses, and then communicating this to the teacher.
This is what we need to teach learners to do.
On top of this, teachers are not that good at really listening to students on a continuous basis. They feel that they’re doing their job well when they’re teaching, not listening.
So let’s say you look inside your head, and you determine what you know and what you need.
Maybe you’d then tell the teacher, “I want to learn more vocabulary”.
And the teacher would go and find some vocabulary lessons and do gap-fill exercises, match the sentence halves, blah blah blah (now you know how to spell blah blah blah in English).
And we’re back to the same problem of material irrelevance.
I was once teaching an advanced class, following a student’s book. In the book was a two-hour class on bird vocabulary. Bird vocabulary! Can you imagine that?
Useful? If you’re an ornithologist, maybe. I didn’t have any ornithologists in the class so, naturally, covering that vocabulary was a complete waste of time.
Even if I had had any ornithologists in the class, it would’ve still been useless. Here’s why:
“Hi Paco, my ornithologist student! Today, we’re looking at bird vocabulary.”
“I already know this vocabulary. I’m an ornithologist.”
“Oh…erm…well then let’s study verbs describing animal noises instead.”
So you can see that you really don’t need a teacher to learn vocabulary. In fact you’ll learn far more vocabulary without a teacher. And yes, there is a lesson on verbs describing animal noises, and no, I don’t recommend it.
In an ideal world, the original conversation between teacher and learner should’ve gone something like this:
“I want to learn more vocabulary.”
“Great! What kind of vocabulary?”
“Oh, I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Well, are there any situations in which you feel that you’re lacking the required vocabulary to have a conversation that flows naturally?”
“Come to think of it, yes. I like football, but I have difficulty speaking about it in English because I don’t know many of the words related the sport.”
“Fantastic! Well look for those words in a dictionary and practise them. You don’t need me.”
Because if you know what you’re missing, you simply need to go and find it, then practise it.
Often, learners don’t know what they want or need so they go to class feeling a bit lost, hoping that the teacher will give them some direction, as if the teacher magically knew what the learner needs.
This doesn’t often happen and as a result, the language that is taught to them becomes lost too.
It’s like looking for something that you’ve lost, but you don’t know what it is that you have lost.
You’re probably thinking, “Why have a teacher at all then? What a waste of time and money!”
Well, not exactly.
I think THE real reason people go to English classes or hire a teacher is not the teaching itself, it’s something much more subtle. It’s the social obligation that a teacher or a class gives the learner.
A teacher holds you accountable for your progress, or lack thereof.
Or at least we feel that the teacher will hold us accountable. And that feeling is enough to motivate us.
On top of this, when you spend “x” amount on an English course, you want to go to class so that you don’t feel that you’ve wasted your money.
Financial obligation.
This is mostly the reason people sign up to gyms to run on a treadmill, when they could be running outside.
When your boss puts your name down to attend an English course at work, this creates the obligation for you to go and study.
So we can see that most of the motivation comes from a desire to please other people, or a desire not to disappoint people (or not waste money).
You may disagree with me here and think, “I don’t care what others think of me”, but this happens on a subconscious level, and it’s something over which we have little control and awareness.
I’ll give you a great example of this.
I always give my students two pieces of homework: something from the material we’re following, and some kind of self-study exercise or practice to improve a particular skill in English.
I specifically tell them that the most important homework is the self-study and practice, and I tell them that this will give them more benefit in the long-term. I also tell them that if they can only do one piece of homework, it should be the self-study and practice.
Most do both, I must say, but if a student only does one piece of homework, they will do the homework from the material, and not the self-study practice. Guaranteed. Even though they know that the other homework will benefit them much more.
Why?
Think about it. Two pieces of homework were given: one for the teacher, and one for the student. If they don’t do the classroom homework, they will have to answer to the teacher and the classroom. If they don’t do the self-study and practice, they only have to answer to themselves.
We can see which one feels heavier. The one which has social obligation attached to it.
This comes from childhood education, where a teacher is a figure of authority, someone you don’t question, and someone whose instructions you follow. And the classroom is like a tribe, and as social animals, we follow the tribe.
We carry this into adulthood.
But this is totally irrelevant in adult education. Nobody has ever stopped to consider that the way we teach children quite possibly isn’t the best way to teach adults.
The learner needs to be the person who dictates the learning process. This is the only way to really make GREAT progress.
And like all things in life, it’s easy to do when you know how.
We’ve got one more problem to look at before we get into solving each of them so each of you can start becoming a superlearner.
Next week, we’ll get our teeth into the final part of this series, where we’ll be looking at that finite, elusive thing that often slips through our fingers: time, and how it affects our learning.
Be there or be square!