Article Published in The News

English Language Teaching: Need to Think Outside the Box


Following traditional methods of English language teaching for decades has not yielded adequate benefits for the students as well as for the policy makers in the Ministry of Education. Contrarily, student participation and the two way flow of ideas between teacher and students is discouraged and suppressed unfairly in the traditional face-to-face classroom interaction where teachers do not stop from being authority figures for their students. Teachers usually ask students to read out loud and respond and to single-answer information questions about course texts. The constant quelling over a period of time surely had negative repercussions. It spoiled the faculties of critical thinking and autonomy in students, and promoted rote learning, passivity and lack of creativity and confidence.

A much-heralded alternative is to change the focus of the classroom from teacher dominated to student-centered using a constructivist approach. Constructivist approach to learning describes learning as a constructive process in which the learning builds an internal representation and interpretation of knowledge by internalizing and transforming new information. Based on this underlying theory, pedagogical approaches in second language teaching and learning have also shifted emphasis from acquiring skills or learning content (product-based process) to interaction of the learners with the content and with the environment (process-based approaches).

Constructivism's perspectives on the role of the individual, on the importance of meaning-making, and on the active role of the learner are the very elements that make the theory appealing to educators. Teachers are typically acutely aware of the role of prior knowledge in students' learning, recognizing that students are not blank slates or empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge. Instead, students bring with them a rich array of prior experiences, knowledge, and beliefs that they use in constructing new understandings. These preconceived structures are either valid, invalid or incomplete. The learner will reformulate his/her existing structures only if new information or experiences are connected to knowledge already in memory. Inferences, elaborations and relationships between old perceptions and new ideas must be personally drawn by the student in order for the new idea to become an integrated, useful part of his/her memory. Memorized facts or information that has not been connected with the learner's prior experiences will be quickly forgotten. Teachers should assist the students in developing new insights and connecting them with their previous learning. Ideas are presented holistically as broad concepts and then broken down into parts.

Learning is a social activity: our learning is intimately associated with our connection with other human beings, our teachers, our peers, our family as well as casual acquaintances, including the people before us or next to us at the exhibit. We are more likely to be successful in our efforts to educate if we recognize this principle rather than try to avoid it. Much of traditional education, as Dewey pointed out, is directed towards isolating the learner from all social interaction, and towards seeing education as a one-on-one relationship between the learner and the objective material to be learned. In contrast, progressive education recognizes the social aspect of learning and uses conversation, interaction with others, and the application of knowledge as an integral aspect of learning.

Social constructivist applications can easily be implemented in our schools through the widespread use of cooperative and collaborative teaching strategies such as: Teams-Games-Tournament, Student Teams Achievement Division, Jigsaw, Numbered Heads Together, and Peer-Peer Tutoring. One of the most obvious places where the impact of social constructivist theories can be seen is in the design and organization of classrooms. Gone are the individual study carrells that appeared with behaviorism. Teachers should recognize the power of peer-peer interactions and the greater classroom community in learning. Many elitist classrooms can accommodate spaces for small group work, as well as for whole class discussions. Elementary classrooms may often include small group reading areas, mathematics centers, and science stations. Middle and high schools should move away from unmovable desks to seating arrangements that are flexible and allow for small group work.

These principles of language instruction based on a constructivist approach can then be integrated with principles of synchronous computer-mediated communication in which meaning can be negotiated in written text. The interactions among learners, as well as the interaction of the learner with authentic material in the Web environment, enhance the ‘learning-as-knowledge-construction’ process.

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The writer is MA English from Pakistan and MA TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from the University of Leeds (UK). He teaches MA (ELTL) in University of the Punjab, Lahore, as visiting faculty, conducts teacher training workshops for Punjab Education Foundation and is a permanent faculty member in Beaconhouse National University, School of Education, Lahore.


(ALI AHMAD ABIDI)
aliahmadabidi@yahoo.com
Lahore.