Teaching Approaches and Learner Needs

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Table of Contents

Language Learning Goals and Rewards
Language and Culture
Learner Identity
Additional Language Acquisition
The Four Skills Model
Curriculum Planning and Classroom Experience
Reference List

Language Learning Goals and Rewards

Language learning has several specific characteristics in comparison with virtually any other academic discipline studied in the classroom. A major difference is that, in classrooms, learners receive specific knowledge that they may further primarily apply to their work-related activities. In language classrooms, on the other hand, learners are given something they will use all the time, not only in their work but also in interpersonal communications and even their thinking processes can be affected if they learn to think in an additional language (Gibbons 2015). The word ‘given,’ however, may not be fully applicable in this context because language cannot be taught—it has to be learned, i.e., it requires committed efforts and active engagement from the learner (Murray & Christison 2011). To achieve it, it is needed to address the goals of language learning and the way they are explained by teachers and perceived by learners.

From my own teaching experience, I have seen that learners display excitement and even delight when they first manage to express their coherent thoughts in a foreign language. Conversations are encouraged, and at some point, I saw students become very excited when their vocabulary and speed of speaking English allowed them to express their opinion. There was one student who was either too shy to talk or too self-conscious about his English, so he would only talk in class when I specifically asked him to. He was always prepared, so he knew all the words we had studied, but he would rarely say anything apart from phrases from the textbook. When he finally felt that he could talk to his classmates in English, even with the simplest phrases and still with mistakes but outside the contexts of situations studied in the textbook, on a variety of subjects, he became amused, relaxed, and active.

I think the ability to communicate is exactly the main reward of learning an additional language. It is what should be stressed when formulating the goals of language learning. Ellis (2013) demonstrated that language teachers who are also successful language learners are less critical about language competence and try to find more rewards for the people they teach. One of such rewards is the ability to express oneself and be understood by a person with a dramatically different cultural background.

As English is becoming a global language, it is becoming more diverse. Murata and Jenkins (2009) use the term ‘English users’ and stress that meanings in English are constantly creatively negotiated because of the cultural differences among users. But what remains important is that they understand each other, and the feeling of effective, successful communication is what is capable of igniting the passion for language learning, which is why it should be promoted as the main goal for learners and teachers.

Language and Culture

Cultural differences are what many language teachers are afraid of. It is the fear of saying something that will be perceived as offensive, of being misunderstood or gravely misunderstanding one’s students (Duff & Talmy 2011). Besides, in diverse classrooms, learners from different backgrounds can even have conflicts because of cultural differences. However, come to think of it, to have a conflict and argue, the conflicting people should speak the same language. Therefore, they already have something in common, which increases the chances for them to understand each other. It is one of the main features of language learning: balancing between cultural specificity, where values may be different, and a common context, where at least meanings are shared. To understand this, it is helpful to turn to Kramsch’s (2014) five language- and culture-related concerns of teachers.

First, it is important to assess the cultural meaning of a linguistic sign, i.e. how people speaking the same language or different languages think differently because particular concepts are decoded into different meanings for them. Second, the opposite process (Luke & Freebody 1999) should be addressed, too, i.e., how cultural frameworks encode messages into particular linguistic signs. Third, it can be observed that culture not only affects communication but is also affected by it, i.e., cultural frameworks can be reconstructed through language. Fourth, this analysis of language and culture should be critically evaluated by examining how it is affected by language and culture because, in analyzing, a researcher cannot use inexistent language or step outside any cultural context, which is why he or she is affected by language and culture, too (Fairclough 2013). Finally, all of this should be translated into practical methods that can be applied to actual teaching processes.

In my teaching experience, I have repeatedly seen misunderstandings among learners. In many cases, they did not understand the causes of their misunderstandings because they did not have enough experience of foreign language learning, which is why they were not prepared for the traps of cultural differences (Moran, Abramson & Moran 2014). I found it extremely effective to explain a misunderstanding. One time, in my class, two students misunderstood each other because the same word meant different things in their languages but, when I asked them to explain to the whole class what each of them had meant by the word, the confusion was over and a valuable example was, therefore, presented to all the students.

Cultural differences, however, may be far more challenging than this in a learning process. Still, similar to my example, the very analysis of them can turn out effective. When a difference is explained in one language that everyone understands, it bridges culturally different contexts and contributes to a better mutual understanding.

Learner Identity

In their attempt to define learning, Murray and Christison (2011) use the concept of transformation as they suggest that learning transforms an individual through his or her interactions with society and changes his or her beliefs and behaviors. For educators, it is important to understand that learning is a process of change, and there are three major considerations in it: the initial state of a learner, the process, i.e. how the change will be carried out, and the desired outcome (Shields 2012). For better education, all three require studying but at the very beginning, a teacher should take into account what he or she is going to transform—or rather, assist in the transformation. That is the learner’s identity.

When I taught at a rather diverse group of people, I once asked all of them what they would have told me if I had asked them who they were (right after their name and perhaps occupation because those are the things people think are expected to be heard in response). The answer to this question is not exactly one’s identity, as identity is a more complex notion (Hogg 2016), but this exercise helped me understand that not only do people have different identities, but their identities come from different areas. While for some, religion and ethnicity seemed to be the number one consideration, for others those were family or interests.

Murray and Christison (2011) stress that it is crucial in the learning process to consider the identity of a learner because failure to do so may lead to the emergence of barriers between the learner and the knowledge that teachers should help him or she obtain. I agree, but upon reviewing relevant literature and having my own experience, I also think that a teacher should help learners adopt, in addition to existing identities, the learning identity (Norton 2012), i.e., help learners identify as learners. One of my students once refused to pronounce a particular word, explaining it by the fact that she was a Muslim. As far as I understood, she thought that what the word meant was a sin, which is why saying the word was sinful, too. I did not make her pronounce anything, but in a private conversation, I asked her what else she was apart from being a Muslim. We established that she also was a woman, a representative of a certain ethnicity, a member of her family, and a few more things we listed together. And, of course, she was a student. I suggested to her that being a student, a learner, was an identity, too, and it did not mean that this identity would have violated the principles associated with her primary identity. But it did mean that learning gave her new opportunities along with new knowledge.

Discovering and promoting the identity of a learner to learners who already have many different identities can be beneficial for their effective cooperation with the purpose of learning and transforming together.

Additional Language Acquisition

Like many benevolent teachers, I tend to employ teaching strategies that I found effective in my learning. At some point in my education, I understood that certain ways of explaining things to me helped me grasp them better than other ways. I realized what the right approach to me was. And I first approached my students the same way, as I thought—if it had helped me learn, it must help them, too. But my teaching experience provided different evidence.

People learn differently. It is one of the main ideas a teacher can learn about learning (Dirksen 2015; Murray & Christison 2011; Riding & Rayner 2013). The concepts of learning styles and learning strategies show not only that there are various ways to learn, but also that some ways are more effective for some people than other ways. These differences are especially vivid in language learning.

From my own experience, I know that some people prefer to spend a lot of time with the textbook and educational materials, as they learn all the words and phrases, read texts, study rules, and do exercises. Only upon gaining some confidence, they become more active in class discussions. Others, on the other hand, prefer to talk more, despite making mistakes and lacking words sometimes, to learn from the context (Cohen 2014). And these are only two examples out of a wide range of behaviors one can see among additional language learners. However, with a variety of understandings of how language acquisition occurs, one thing that most researchers agree upon is that language acquisition should be regarded as a social process (Breen 2011; van Lier 2000). Therefore, learning should be associated with the interaction.

Learning takes commitment and determination. Teachers should understand that we demand a lot from our students: we take their time and efforts, and we need to ensure that learning is efficient, i.e. that the efforts made by the learners are adequately translated into their knowledge (Mitchell, Myles & Marsden 2013). For this purpose, it is necessary to find an individual approach to every learner and ensure that the way you teach is the best way for him or her to learn.

The Four Skills Model

One may not notice it in his or her first language or stop noticing it after achieving proficiency in an additional language, but there are many different linguistic processes that people perform in their everyday life. All those processes constitute language knowledge, but it might be helpful to regard them separately to gain a better understanding of how a language works. The primary division of language skills is into two categories: receptive and productive (Gibbons 2015). The first category includes reading and listening, and the second includes writing and speaking.

In the four skills model of language learning, it is recognized that those processes are different and require different kinds of attention and effort of a learner (Rost & Candlin 2014). Therefore, it is possible to approach improving language knowledge by tackling problems in one of these areas separately, e.g. assigning readings to a student who experiences difficulties with processing large amounts of information in a foreign language or encouraging a student who speaks English slowly and unconfidently to talk more during a class discussion (Cook 2013). In the context of this differentiation between different skills, one may ask: Are they separate skills?

The answer is probably no (Celce-Murcia 2001), as it is unlikely that there is a person for whom English is an additional language and who can read Shakespeare’s plays without a dictionary but cannot understand a single word of English when hearing it from another person. The skills are interconnected, and it is especially true for learners because they learn them all at the same time. Moreover, there is never just one process working (Hinkel 2011). Sometimes, as my students would listen to a taped conversation in English, they would draw something in the air with their fingers. The movements were unconscious, but I noticed them and understood what they meant: students were picturing how the text they were listening to would be written—to understand it better. When doing tests, some of my students would move their lips, trying to silently pronounce the sentences they saw written on the paper—to understand their meaning better or to apply the correct grammatical form. Harmer (2007, p. 265) stated that ‘it would make no sense to teach each skill in isolation’ because they are often applied simultaneously in different combinations.

However, the cognitive differences among the four skills should not be underestimated. I met a student once who told me that, when speaking English, he was like a smart dog: he understood everything but could not say a word. It seemed counterintuitive, but it is not impossible. A person who is always exposed to a language but never needs to speak it may develop an unbalanced knowledge. Balance is exactly what is pursued in the differentiation among the four skills. As part of his or her work, an educator should ensure that a learner can equally effectively express himself or herself and understand others.

Curriculum Planning and Classroom Experience

Curriculum planning is a major component of designing how learning will be organized. It is not only listing educational materials but also choosing a philosophy and a strategy of delivering knowledge. In fact, ‘delivering’ knowledge is not the only way to regard classroom experience. It is rather appropriate to talk about creating an environment where learning occurs because learning is more of an interactive process than a receptive one (Gibbons 2015; van Lier 2000). Murray and Christison (2011) identify four major principles of curriculum planning: linguistic, subject-matter-based, learner-centered, and learning-centered; each has advantages and disadvantages.

The model that I think is the most convenient and effective for me as a teacher is learning-based. The classroom experience that I strive to shape is the feeling of being together in a given place and interacting with a clear purpose to learn. A curriculum is, therefore, not a rigid plan but rather a statement of purpose and intention. Learning objectives may change according to the needs and requests of the learners, which I highly encourage, but the overall philosophy of establishing an environment of learning should always be followed, which corresponds to Vygotsky’s idea of ‘scaffolding’ (Gibbons 2015; Kayi-Aydar 2013; Yazdanpanah & Khanmohammad 2014).

One of my students once told me that he wanted to learn in the classroom, not to chat. He thought my way of teaching was flippant and lacked the provision of hard knowledge as he imagined it. I explained that language was not hard knowledge, and ‘chatting,’ in fact, could be much more effective than memorizing tons of materials. Fortunately, he eventually liked my classes, but I think many teachers may face this problem and the answer here is to explain from the very beginning that classrooms for language learning are rather interactive environments than lecture halls.

Reference List

Breen, MP 2001, ‘The social context for language learning—a neglected situation?’, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 135-158.

Celce-Murcia, M (ed.) 2001, Teaching English as a second or foreign language, 3rd edn, Heinle & Heinle, Boston, MA.

Cohen, AD 2014, Strategies in learning and using a second language, Routledge, New York.

Cook, V 2013, Second language learning and language teaching, Routledge, New York.

Dirksen, J 2015, Design for how people learn, New Riders, San Francisco.

Duff, P & Talmy, S 2011, ‘Language socialization approaches to second language acquisition: social, cultural, and linguistic development in additional languages’, in D Atkinson (ed), Alternative approaches to second language acquisition, Routledge, New York, NY, pp. 95-116.

Ellis, E 2013, ‘The ESL teacher as plurilingual: an Australian perspective’, TESOL Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 446-471.

Fairclough, N 2013, Critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language, Routledge, New York.

Gibbons, P 2015, Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning: teaching second language learners in the mainstream classroom, Heinemann, Portsmouth.

Harmer, J 2007, How to teach English, Pearson Education, Essex.

Hinkel, E (ed) 2011, Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning, Routledge, New York, NY.

Hogg, MA 2016, ‘Social identity theory’, in S McKeown, R Haji & N Ferguson (eds), Understanding peace and conflict through social identity theory, Springer, New York, NY, pp. 3-17.

Kayi-Aydar, H 2013, ‘Scaffolding language learning in an academic ESL classroom’, ELT Journal: English Language Teaching Journal, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 324-335.

Kramsch, C 2014, ‘Language and culture’, AILA Review, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 30-55.

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Mitchell, R, Myles, F & Marsden, E 2013, Second language learning theories, Routledge, New York.

Moran, RT, Abramson, NR & Moran, SV 2014, Managing cultural differences, Routledge, New York.

Murata, K & Jenkins J (eds.) 2009, Global Englishes in Asian contexts: current and future debates, Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Murray, D & Christison, M 2011, What English language teachers need to know, Routledge, New York.

Norton, B 2012, ‘Identity and second language acquisition’, in CA Chapelle (ed), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics, John Wiley & Sons, Somerset, NJ.

Riding, R & Rayner, S 2013, Cognitive styles and learning strategies: understanding style differences in learning and behavior, Routledge, New York.

Rost, M & Candlin, CN 2014, Listening in language learning, Routledge, New York.

Shields, CM 2012, Transformative leadership in education: equitable change in an uncertain and complex world, Routledge, New York.

Van Lier, L 2000, ‘From input to affordance: social-interactive learning from an ecological perspective’, in JP Lantolf (ed), Sociocultural theory and second language learning, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, pp. 245-260.

Yazdanpanah, M & Khanmohammad, H 2014, ‘Sociocultural theory and listening comprehension: does the scaffolding of EFL learners improve their listening comprehension?’, Theory & Practice in Language Studies, vol. 4, no. 11, pp. 2389-2395.

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