What's the importance of the classroom?
A reflection on learner autonomy and the importance of the classroom by Lindsay Clandfield
Submitted by britishcouncil_... on 15 February, 2011 - 08:45
A reflection on learner autonomy and the importance of the classroom
by Lindsay Clandfield (ELT Blogathon Guest Post)
Like many other full-time writers, I have to engage in regular physical activity to stop from becoming too sedentary. Some people I know go to a gym, others take the dog for long walks. I go to swimming classes.
I can swim. My mother dragged me kicking and screaming when I was five years old to swimming classes and the teacher was of the school that believed the best way for a child to overcome his/her fear of the water was being tossed into the deep end. It eventually did work, and I happily continued swim classes until I was ten years old. At high school I joined the swim team and I swam competitively. I wasn’t Michael Phelps but I could hold my own in a race. I trained as a life guard in Toronto, which became my summer job for over four years and helped finance my way through university. I taught my children how to swim. We live near the sea. I can swim.
So why do I go to classes now?
The class that I go to is called Mantenimiento (Spanish for maintenance). It is for people like me who can swim and just want to work on their technique. There are maybe six or seven of us. We have different teachers each day who give us a series of things to do. “Stretch your arms and legs”, “Warm up by doing 200 metres”, “Swim 300 metres on your front”, “Now do 100 backstroke”, “Now work on your legs, here take a board to hold onto”. I go religiously four times a week whenever I am not travelling.
I don’t think there is really anything new that I have learned in this “class”. The series of exercises they have given us I now know by heart. I could do them on my own. And yet I don’t. The few times I have been swimming by myself I barely do half the distance I do in that class. I get bored. I know what I need to do but I just don’t do it. And this is where I come back to the world of language teaching (yes I was going to get there eventually!). It all has to do with learner autonomy.
Learner autonomy has been a popular topic now in ELT for the past twenty years at least. At conferences, teacher training workshops, in journals and magazines it is unquestioned that promoting learner autonomy is something we should all be doing. The Common European Framework devotes a lot of space to suggesting how to encourage learners to become more autonomous, to be “lifelong learners”. I’ve been told on more than one occasion that the ideal thing for a teacher to strive towards is that the student no longer needs him/her.
Of course I think this is all good. I also try to do this with my adult learners – devoting some time to showing them resources and sharing tips and tricks for increasing English outside of class. But when I think to my swimming class experience, I realise that many of my students may be in the same situation. Maybe they know what to do to improve their English by now, but they still need to come to class.
I made a list of reasons why I think this is. The advantages of a classroom for learning are:
1) there is a sense of community
2) someone (usually the teacher) gives instructions on what to do, and can give you feedback on what you do
3) there is peer pressure to do these things (I’m speaking now of my own experience as an adult learner, fully aware that secondary school is different!)
4) there is a sense of ritual and responsibility (e.g. when I’m swimming on my own I can show up late, I can do less distance; language learners can similarly cut corners more easily too)
5) learning is, for many, more fun as a social experience
How does this affect what I do as a teacher in the classroom? Well, first of all I try to make the classroom environment as enjoyable and focused on learning as possible. This means recognising the social experience of a class and design activities that tap into that experience (e.g. not just doing written exercises which can be done at home). I try to include a variety of things so that each lesson is unique but include enough routine and familiar activities so that each lesson has a comfortable level of security.
So, while working on developing learner autonomy is fine and good we shouldn’t forget that some learners may be perfectly capable of being autonomous and will still come to class for a whole bunch of reasons.
That’s the end of my reflection. I’ve got to go to swimming class now!
Lindsay Clandfield is a teacher, teacher trainer and author. He writes books and materials for English language learners and teachers. He is also interested in lists.
http://sixthings.net
http://twitter.com/lclandfield
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