ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Curtis Kelly

Chris Hunt

Panelists: Chris | Marc | Curtis
Date: May 2004

Topic: "Do we need democracy in the classroom?"

Marc Helgesen

"Democracy" strikes me as a bit of a loaded term. One can't really even question it without sounding like Pol Pot (or certain politicians in the news these days). So, of course, I'm in favor of it. For me, the practical classroom application is autonomy. But two thoughts on democracy, per se, before I get to how I use it in my own class.

Democracy and student choice are very useful, important and good. I would suggest, however, that a lot of our students are not particularly sophisticated consumers of English. In the world of restaurants, McDonald's is very popular – but does anyone confuse it with quality? In the world of language teaching, some things can be popular without actually being useful. (Witness some of the horror stories about bad schools and lessons on the message boards. Yet those same schools and lessons seem to go on without change. I've seen a lot of "Gee that was fun. I wonder what the purpose was?" lessons.). A few years ago, my co-author Steve Brown wrote an article where he compared learning a language to climbing a mountain. And if you are serious about climbing Everest, you need a Sherpa. You need a guide – someone who can get you going in the right direction. We, as teachers, play that role.

“I don't think as teachers we can say that just moving on, without direction, is what we are hired to do.”

Secondly, there is the syllabus. One of my favorite scenes from Alice in Wonderland is the one where Alice – tired, lost and confused (I'm sure you see the parallel to English teaching) comes across the Cheshire Cat.

"Could you tell me, please, which way I ought to go?"
"It depends" replied the cat, "a good deal on where you want to get to."

And where we want our students to get to – their goals and ours – has to determine the direction we steer our classes.

In the story, of course, Alice goes on to say that it doesn't matter much where she goes, so long as she gets somewhere. The Cheshire Cat assured her that that was certain to happen. But I don't think as teachers we can say that just moving on, without direction, is what we are hired to do.

Having said that, maybe I should also point out that I teach university students. As adults, there is no reason they all need to be doing the same thing in the same way all the time. Maybe an important point is that if autonomy is the classroom application of democracy, it can be like a parliamentary democracy where everyone has a voice and a choice, not a "winner take all" red state/blue state contest. That means giving learners choices. This can be both within class tasks and about which tasks to do.

It could be as easy as asking students if they want to do a given activity alone or with a partner.

Many of us replay a listening segment after students have completed a task to give them extra practice and make sure everyone has a chance to actually notice the correct information. I often invite my students to decide how they want to listen. Some close their books and their eyes to imagine the conversations. Others look at their books and try to pick out the information on the page as they hear it. Still others watch me and an OHP screen of the page. I point to the information just before they hear it as a way of providing support. This is really an example of personalization, a topic I wrote about last month.

Many – perhaps most – of us use games in the classroom. Years ago, I assumed that games had to have an element of competition to motivate the learners. How wrong I was. Usually competition and points leads to faster, less thoughtful language – and often to less language. Still some students do like competition. Why not make it optional? "Here's the game. You decide if you want to keep track of points or now (I find that, given the choice, most of my students would rather communicate and cooperative that compete ­ but the point is that it is their choice. (We did a Think Tank on cooperative learning a while back that you might want to look at).

A lot of books have activities that feature a series of open-ended questions or topics for students to talk about. The questions are usually designed to give practice on a particular grammar point, language function or topic. Books almost always give you more questions that the students will have time for (authors don't want you to "run out of lesson" before you "run out of class time."). Why not have the students look over the page and decide which the want to talk about? They look at the items and rate them for interest (I often use "the smilie scale": JKL). They rate each item and then start with the Js. Just the act of thinking about the questions means they are starting to think of possible answers. And they are starting with their interests, which is always good.

At times I've taken the smilie scale farther. When Richard Day and Junko Yamanaka wrote the reading text Impact Issues, they put 30 units in the book, even though they knew most Japanese universities classes meet something less than 30 times (30 is often the official number but there are always sports days, school festival and a few other cancellations). When I taught it, the first day of class I gave everyone a copy of the table of contents page. Alone or in pairs, they looked over they topics and rated the readings. I used their ratings to help me plan the course. I didn't go strictly with their votes. There were a couple lessons on topics like gay rights that not many people voted for but that I thought would be useful to bring up. But the point is that the learners interests were a major consideration.

A lot of time in university classes is spent of pairwork and groupwork. Since we have large classes, it is the easiest way to give enough practice time. And, of course, it pair and groupwork is real communication, different groups work at different speeds. I find a good way to encourage autonomy (and to keep learners on task) is to add a "Finished? Your choice" option. When learners finish the main task, they can go on to another task (Longman, Cambridge and Macmillan [Heinemann] all sell books of photocopiable activities that are a great source for these extra tasks. Coursebook Teacher's Manuals often have them, too. Or then can do task recycling (repeat the task with new partners). Or they can do "free conversation in English" (for most classes, I find suggesting a topic useful).

There are so many ways learners can make their own choices. It not only increases their interest. I also makes them more responsible for their learning. That, I think, is a key benefit of autonomy.

Because where we go does depend on where we want to get to.

Panelists: Chris | Marc | Curtis

Discuss this topic on our Message Board

Marc Helgesen, Miyagi Gakuin Women's College

Co-author of English Firsthand and Active Listening

<<Back Number | Top | Recent Issue>>