ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Chuck Sandy

Curtis Kelly

Chris Hunt

Mark O'Neil

Panelists: Chuck | Curtis | Chris | Mark
Date: December 2004

Topic: "What are 5 things you wish you'd known when you started teaching?"

(This is a continuation of the theme discussed by panel regulars Marc Helgesen and Peter Viney, as well as guests Stephen Krashen and Michael McCarthy, last month at the JALT 2004 national conference. See last month's feature.)

Mark O'Neil

I saw Curtis's posting on the ETJ list and his list of 5 things he wished he'd known then, and I was intrigued by his comments as much of what he says mirrors my thinking over many years. I have added my comments to Curtis’s headings:

1. Human beings are language machines
We are also forgetting machines. Rob Waring has been talking about this for some time in relation to vocabulary on the ETJ certificate course, but it applies to our whole lives - language included. We cannot - and would not want to - remember everything we experience. (What did you have for breakfast on the 3rd of October, 1988?). So our memory is deliberately selective. It seems to me that some things are higher 'priority' for our memories, and language is one of these. Higher on the list would be things that cause us pain, for example. We only need to be burned once to learn (not remember) that fire is hot.

"Only a syllabus aimed at encouraging students to learn will truly succeed."

2. Schools don't know what they are doing
Most school curricula and course material is geared toward remembering, not learning. I believe that only a syllabus aimed at encouraging students to learn will truly succeed. True, some students succeed anyway, but they are generally motivated to do so and hence will find their own learning process, perhaps even in spite of the process imposed by the school or teacher. What schools don't acknowledge and students aren't told is that they can pass 'the test' by remembering. After the test, they then forget. OR they can learn, pass the test and have language for life. At JHS, I remembered French but learned Physics. I blame my French teacher (in addition to blaming myself) for the fact that my French has gone but thank my Physics teacher as I still know now what I learned way back then.

3. Studying is not learning
This is so true but is missed by many teachers ('I taught you this already!'). A true teacher facilitates learning. I have been harping on that "learning and remembering are not the same thing" for several years on the ETJ certificate course. Remembering and forgetting are natural opposites. That is, what we remember can be forgotten. What we learn is for life.

4. It's not about me
You mean me - the teacher? Some teachers tend to impose their own beliefs on their students, when what students need is to discover their own learning process. That is, in order to learn most effectively, students need to become 'individual explorers'. However, most teachers have groups of students bigger than one (!). Perhaps the most efficient model for teachers to aspire to is of a group of 'democratic explorers,' where students recognise that the group class needs to meet a democratically acceptable set of needs. (Breen and Littlejohn, I think)

5. We all have disabilities
Yip. And mine is affecting my liver!

True false quiz:

1. All students learn the same thing at the same time for the same reason.
2. All students have the same abilities, interests and motivations.

Both false, I hope you'll agree. In fact, if 2 is false, then 1 must be false, too. The teacher's struggle (notice this T/F thing is not just about language - it could equally apply to learning the piano!) is to match their lessons with the students' different abilities, different interests and different motivations, so that students can learn for their own reasons and at their own pace. NOW write the textbook!

My thoughts here heavily influenced by: Classroom Decision Making by Breen and Littlejohn (2000, Cambridge), and Psychology for Language Teachersby Williams and Burden (1997, Cambridge).

Curtis - thanks for getting me thinking.

Panelists: Chuck | Curtis | Chris | Mark

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Mark O'Neil, Cambridge University Press
Co-author of the Business Explorer series.

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