When Students’ Set of Beliefs Are Overlooked

When Students’ Set of Beliefs Are Overlooked

I have been teaching adult students even before graduating. This year, and upon parents’ insistence, I agreed to form a small group of teenagers at home. I must admit that it had been ages since I last worked with students this age and only the thought of being in the classroom frightened me: no longer would I feel like fish in the water.

By May, my deepest fears had already proved to be well-founded: I knew nothing about adolescents, what they liked, how they learnt, what they talked about, etc. To make matters worse, the sources of wisdom of methodology gurus I had studied at the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) College were nothing but empty words.

Although I tried out numerous techniques, asked for advice and did research on their likes and dislikes, nothing seemed to awaken them from their apathy. Feeling defeated and discouraged, I decided not to take Harmer’s (2007) advice on designing engaging and pertinent material this time (p. 84). Instead, I obediently followed the course book and workbook activities only to discover that students were actively involved in doing them!

Puzzled as I was, I embarked on a fascinating quest to find out what had occurred when it dawned on me that I had failed to ask them, undermining their opinion. As Richards and Lockhart (1996) contend “while learning is the goal of teaching, it is not necessarily the mirror of teaching. Learners, too, bring to learning their own beliefs, goals, attitudes, and decisions, which in turn influence how they approach their learning” (p.52).

To my surprise, when surveyed about what they considered good teaching, students acknowledged they felt comfortable with more traditional and teacher-centred classroom techniques. As a consequence, I have begun to include tasks which meet these preferences. Of course, there is still much research to be done in order to strike a balance between the students’ and my beliefs aiming at a better outcome.

References

Harmer, J. (2009). The practice of English language teaching (4^th ed.). Essex, UK: Pearson Longman.

Richards, J. C., and Lockhart, C. (1996). Reflective teaching in second language classrooms. New York, NY:Cambridge University Press.