The Language Teacher
02 - 2001
A "Learner-Centered Classroom" in a General English Class
Matsuno Sumie
Nagoya College of Foreign Language
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Key Words: Learner-Centered Classroom, Vocabulary, Listening
Learner English Level: All
Learner Maturity Level: College
Preparation Time: Varies according to student input
Activity Time: 30-40 minutes for song activities
Problem and Question
I have been teaching in a vocational school in Nagoya, where the students are usually eager to attend classes to prepare for certification examinations such as the TOEIC. However, one of my recent classes was "General English," which is not a test preparation course, so most of my students had little or no motivation to study.
At the beginning of the term my class was typically teacher-centered, where I decided what I taught and how I taught; the students could not make any decisions and were simply receivers of information. Nunan mentions that the learner-centered curriculum is "a collaborative effort between teachers and learners, since learners are closely involved in the decision-making process regarding the content of the curriculum and how it is taught" (1988, p. 2). Upon reading this I asked myself, "What if I practice this notion of learner-centered teaching in my own class?"
Solution
I gave my students a questionnaire about what they wanted to learn and how they thought we, both the students and I, could improve the class. In the next class, I considered what they had written in their questionnaires as much as possible. After class, I asked for their opinions, including some further suggestions about the materials and activities of the day. In the following class, I based my activities on their suggestions from the previous questionnaires. I did this three consecutive times. One month later, I asked my students their overall impressions of the three classes.
The initial questionnaires indicated that the students wanted to use songs as materials. On the first day, the theme of Aladdin was chosen, because they believed that Disney songs might be easier to understand. First, the students listened to the song, and then the words were distributed (see portion of handout in Fig. 1). Some words were chosen for the students to guess meaning. This activity was done as pair work. Then I asked them to translate the song into Japanese word by word. Finally, while listening to the tape once more, they sang the song.
A Whole New World Please guess the meanings of the underlined words.
|
Their comments after class indicated that all of the students somehow enjoyed the class. Though they felt that it was very difficult to guess the meanings of the words during that particular activity, translating the meaning of the entire song was pretty successful. One student said that he enjoyed the translation because he had known the music but not the meaning of the song. My reflection toward this class was that it was good, and amazingly, nobody seemed to get sleepy.
On that day, following my previous request to them to bring their own songs for the second class, one student brought me four songs. At the end of the period, the class listened to the songs and decided which one they would study in the next class. What they chose was "Eyes on Me" by Faye Wong. In the next class they did exercises as illustrated in Figure 2, and while they did so I played the song as background music, following one student's request.
Eyes On Me Fill in the blanks. I saw you smiling at me Rearrange the words in the correct order: (.........................) (so, me, with,
darling, share) |
This class was better than the first class, because the fill-in-the-blank and change-the-word-order activities, which my students had suggested would improve their listening skills, were very successful. One student said that he had never known the pronunciation of tiny. He used to pronounce it as /tini/, not /taini/. He said that listening to music was a good way to learn pronunciation.
At the end of class, the theme song from Titanic was selected as the material for the third class (see Fig. 3). Based on their comments and my reflection, this third class was the most successful. Since they all knew this song well, they enjoyed listening to the music. Concerning the activity, making sentences from key words, which again some students had recommended to me, one student said, "I could learn some uses of the words....I would like to use them in my own speech and writing."
My Heart Will Go On Please make sentences using the following words. Every night in my (..........) Far across the distance .............................
(2) distance |
Conclusion
The overall reflections written by students indicated that allowing the students to decide what to do in class, including choosing materials and activities, is a good way to motivate students who at first do not seem willing to study. In my class, this meant using songs as material. What I noticed through the three classes was that almost all of the students seemed to enjoy the classes more than the previous classes using the texts, and they did not sleep or misbehave. What I decided through this research is that in my General English classes I will follow what the students want to learn: that is, as much as possible, the class will be guided by their decisions -- often negotiated between them and me -- and not simply by my own.
Reference
Nunan, D. (1988). The learner-centred curriculum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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