ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Chuck Sandy

Chris Hunt

Panelists: Chuck | Marc | Peter | Chris
Date: April 2004

Topic: "Who do your students see?"

Marc Helgesen

One can't read Chuck's piece without feeling the very real, very deep emotion. I think the same is true with Peter's. He is providing the counterbalance – a view of the other side of the coin.

In my own classes, I certainly do want to be real, and open, and deep. But here's the rub: I don't want to be real important. I don't want to be the focus. I want to be a facilitator for the students sharing their ideas, experiences, feelings and dreams – to the degree they want (or don't want). I'm not suggesting that Chuck or anyone else does want to be the focus. I am just sharing what comes up for me when I look at how to personalize my classes. How do I make it not about me?

“I want to be a facilitator for the students sharing their ideas, experiences, feelings and dreams – to the degree they want (or don't want).”

An answer – or a least a way of making this work in the classroom – is humanistic language teaching. Humanism looks at language teaching as more than vocabulary, grammar and function (though those are certainly important and any class that doesn't attend to them in one way or another is likely to fail). We are teaching "whole people." They really can and need to communicate. Communication is not only what they learn. It is how they learn.

This seems obvious but it hasn't always been so. Until fairly recently, language learning was seen as largely the result of practice in manipulation of forms and vocabulary. In the late 70's and early 80's, one of "the methods" – we talked a lot about "the methods" in those days – called Community Language Learning (CLL) stressed the need to create a community of learners in our classrooms. Their communication could guide the syllabus.

We don't hear much about CLL or any of the other methods these days. Perhaps because they have served their purpose by making the students' input standard in most classes.

However, it is tricky. Some students want to go deep into personal experiences. Up close and personal is great for them. But some don't. It isn't humanistic, it's none of your damn business.

What's the solution? One way is to provide situations where learners can personalize a task. We can make sure they are open enough that learners can answer at the level they want. For example, in most classes and textbooks, there are listening tasks. They usually involve overhearing someone else's conversation (sort of CIA English). However, any listening has a topic, and when we think about the topic, we can usually find a way to personalize it. I like adding a few extra "about you" questions after a listening task. I usually make the first couple very easy to understand and answer (If they were hearing past-tense personal histories, I'd start with "Where were you born?"-kinds of questions). Then we could move into more open questions: "What did you do last weekend?" (They can give short answers or long). In junior high school, "What class did you love or hate? Why?" (They have their choice of going into the positive or negative.)

After the listening, the students work in pairs or small groups to share what they wrote. Whether they choose to go deep or not, the activity has been personalized. They are talking about themselves which usually makes them more invested in the task.

Another way of humanizing and personalizing the class is to invite learners to share their own stories. Again, I usually do this is pairs or small groups. I teach in university so nearly everything is in pairs and small groups. It is practical given the large numbers. How else could they get enough practice? But it is also important when talking about themselves. If we ask people to say something in front of the whole class, that is public speaking – which ranks above "going to the dentist" on most people's scale of scary things. Again, an example. This being the start of the new school year, a lot of us use ice-breakers to help students get to know each other. One old standard is introductions with something they like ("I'm (name) and I like ______.) Students go around, usually filling in the blank with the banal: "I'm Naomi and I like music/tennis/Johnny Depp /chocolate." The problem, of course, is that, although it is personalized information, it is highly forgettable (everyone likes music, nearly all of my students love Johnny Depp, etc.). I often start with year with "An introduction to remember." It is the same activity, but I ask students to come up with something they think partners will remember a month (or longer) later. It should be something that they are probably the only one in the room for whom it is true. They stand, circulate and introduce themselves to several partners. It's simple, But the results really are more memorable. They students are more engaged in the task. It is about them. Here are some things I've heard (and that I remember, in some cases five years later).

• I'm Natsumi. I got this scar on my last day of elementary school. I fell down at the graduation ceremony. Blood everywhere.
• I'm Shiho. My sister is an opera singer.
• I'm Chiyaki. I have 9 body pierces,
• (By the way, I'm Marc and I don't like chocolate.)

Another simple idea. Many textbooks have questions for learners to ask each other. Why not let them choose the questions they want to ask instead of waiting for the partner to ask? That way, they are both choosing the ones they want to talk about and the ones they find most interesting.

The point is that there are almost always easy ways to make the learners' own lives part of the class. They can be added on to most listening, speaking and writing tasks or as freestanding tasks. When possible, the students should be able to decide the depth of the information they want to reveal.

Personalizing the content, however, is only one aspect of humanizing the classroom. Presenting information in ways that different learners can make sense of it is also important.

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Panelists: Chuck | Marc | Peter | Chris

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