The Language Teacher
06 - 2001

Discovering and Expanding Your Teaching-Style Preferences

Stephen Thewlis



Things have gotten easier for language teachers. Most people finally agree that students learn differently and that there is no one best approach or methodology. But it hasn't alwasys been that way.

For much of the history of our profession, researchers and theoreticians argued that there was one best (i.e., most effective/ efficient/ pedagogically defensible) way to teach and learn languages, and if we only did enough research and enough statistical analysis we could find out what it was. They proposed one breakthrough in the field after another as the next true pedagogical salvation, and many of us were all too willing to jump whole-heartedly onto any new methodological bandwagon. The last 50 years of language teaching have been a veritable carousel of discarded dogmas: grammar-translation, direct method, audio-lingual's stimulus-response, the natural approach, other ostensibly student-centered dogmas like community language learning, silent way, total physical response. One by one they rose and fell. Tossing out the baby with the bath water has been an occupational hazard of our profession.

Awareness of cross-cultural differences has also begun to expand. American linguists and methodologists have not typically been very interested in the effects of cultural differences on classroom interaction. As recently as 1997, of the more than 1500 presentations at the international TESOL conference, fewer than ten (just over one half of one percent!) focussed on how cross-cultural differences affect classroom interaction. But ten is better than none. Although systematic examinations of how such deep-structure cultural values as attitudes about authority, about individual versus collective orientation, or about how knowledge should be presented and processed all relate to classroom interaction, they are still in their infancy. Even so, this particular baby has, at last, been born into our profession, and is not likely to be tossed out any time soon.

So we have, at last, been granted theoretical permission for the belief that there's more than one way to skin the pedagogical cat, and that differences among individuals and cultures can play a significant role. Teachers no longer need to feel guilty if they confess that their personal methodology (often somewhat apologetically described as eclectic but student centered), is actually whatever works, and that this might change from class to class or country to country.

However, this new freedom still runs the risk of being just a different kind of bogus methodological salvation (Everybody do their own thing!), unless we can ensure that student centered teaching doesn't just mean a class where students do most of the talking, but rather a class where information is presented in multiple ways that maximize students' individual access to (and mastery of) information and skill. In order to achieve this, teachers -- and workshops that purport to help them -- must try to accomplish two goals:

Know Thyself

People have a natural tendency toward blind spots, whether created by culture or by personality. Teachers tend to teach the way they, themselves, like to learn. In order for us to become truly student centered, we need a clear awareness of the role that our own prejudices and predilections play in the choices we make for our students. We must first determine specifically what our own often-unconscious preferences are. Then we must assess how closely these match the preferences of our students. Finally, we must honestly examine the extent to which the learning activities in our classes reflect student choices or teacher choices, and the extent to which we offer a range of options that will appeal to diverse preferences in the same classroom.

Fortunately, there are now a number of tools to help us navigate through the thicket of whatever works -- though not so much from the fields of language education and applied linguistics as from the fields of cognitive psychology, cross-cultural communication and human resources development. Such instruments as the Learning Style Inventory, developed by David Kolb, provide some very helpful, structured ways for both new and experienced teachers to examine and define their individual preference profiles. By becoming aware of how preferences correlate strongly with cultural background and choice of profession, (American-trained EFL teachers, for example, tend to fall into one particular learning style preference profile.) we can begin to plan strategically to include other activities that would not naturally occur to people like ourselves.

Seek Diverse Perspectives

It's not enough to simply be aware of our own blind spots. We must compensate for them by actively seeking out and granting acceptance to points of view from those who are not like us. Having clearly defined our own perspectives, we then need to intentionally seek out and collaborate with our opposites, and systematically expand our repertoire of techniques to include learners with very different ways of learning. Fortunately, our new times have seen an increasing appreciation for diversity and the development of structured techniques (again primarily developed by the fields of organizational and human resources development) that help us learn the most from the people with whom we have the least in common.

It is only by defining and including these different voices in our lesson planning that we can hope to insure that whatever works works not just for ourselves, but for every student in our classroom.

References

Kolb, D. (1999). Learning styles inventory. Boston: McBer and Company.



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