A class-centred approach to language teaching

This article was originally published in 2002 in the English Language Teaching Journal 56/4, 397-403. It is available at http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/

A class-centred approach to language teaching Rose M. Senior This article provides a framework for understanding the principles that underlie the classroom decision-making of experienced language teachers. It is based on a study that examined social processes in classes of adult English language learners. The study revealed that teachers are sensitive to the social needs of their class groups, and that their pedagogically and sociallyoriented behaviours are closely intertwined. The way that experienced teachers set up learning tasks is governed by a tacit understanding of the principles of group dynamics. Many language teachers, it seems, have intuitively adopted a class-centred approach to their teaching.

Introduction Many researchers have sought to understand the basis upon which language teachers make their everyday classroom decisions. Allwright (1992; 1996) points out that teachers spend a significant amount of class time behaving in ways that are not directly related to the business of teaching. For example, a teacher might listen with the class to an anecdote recounted by a particular student, digress from a pedagogic task in order to give advice to a student about a personal problem, or joke with the class when something amusing happens. Allwright suggests that teacher–classroom behaviour can be viewed as a ‘balancing act between opposing forces’, a ‘tightrope walk’, or ‘a continually reinvented compromise between competing social and pedagogic demands’ (1996:223). This view can be represented schematically in the following way:

FIGURE 1

Teacher drawn in opposite directions

Allwright also hypothesizes that the classroom behaviour of language teachers can be explained by a desire to develop in learners a pattern of behaviour appropriate to the formation and/or maintenance of a ‘learning community’ within the classroom (op. cit.: 219).

The present article will provide support for this hypothesis.

Classes operating as groups

The notion of language classes operating as communities of learners, or as groups as unified groups of learners, is not new. Teacher educators working in the humanistic tradition, such as Moskowitz (1978), stress the importance of creating warm, accepting, class groups in which students readily support one another. Meanwhile, a number of educators, including Stevick (1976), Littlewood (1981), and Rivers (1992), refer to the importance of developing nonthreatening classroom atmospheres, in which students feel comfortable enough to interact readily with others in the target language.

All language teachers are aware that no two classes are alike, and that some are a pleasure to teach, while others are quite the opposite. In a nationwide survey Hadfield (1992: 7) found that a key concern of language teachers related to ‘the atmosphere of the class and the chemistry of the class group’. In an earlier article in this journal I reported that experienced teachers defined the quality of their classes in terms of class cohesion (Senior 1997). The teachers in my study valued cohesive classes, and professed to go to considerable lengths to foster the development and maintenance of class cohesion.

The study The present study examined a range of social processes occurring in eight intensive English language classes for adult learners from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The classes, which were held in five different institutions, averaged ten weeks in length, and on average contained around 16 students. The levels of the classes ranged from beginners with little or no knowledge of English to advanced learners capable of discussing news items and controversial topics in English. The social development of each class was followed from the first to the final day of each course. Data were gathered through weekly classroom observations, extended weekly interviews with all the teachers, and open-ended questionnaires. These were followed by interviews with all of the students (apart from those in the beginners’ class, who simply completed a questionnaire translated into their mother tongue).

The results of the study confirmed that the classroom behaviour of language teachers is governed by a desire to achieve social as well as pedagogic goals. The data revealed that the teachers were highly sensitive to the overall atmospheres of their class groups, and regularly made impromptu class management decisions according to what seemed right for their class at a particular time. For example, if they sensed that their students were stressed or overworked, a teacher might allow a few minutes of light relief to relax and reinvigorate the class, before returning to the task at hand. Similarly, if they felt that the agitated behaviour of a single student was unsettling the class, a teacher might pay special attention to that student’s needs before returning to the business of teaching. Teachers also took social considerations into account in the way they organized learning tasks.

The following explanatory framework for the teachers’ classroom decision-making is presented below:

FIGURE 2

Teacher draws class together

The unshaded sections of the circles represent occasions when the teachers attended either to social or to pedagogic considerations within their classes. The shaded section within the overlapping circles represents times when the teachers set up learning tasks in such a way that both social and pedagogic priorities were accommodated. The following examples from the study demonstrate how language learning tasks can be effective not only pedagogically but also socially. In each case I will explain how and why each task has the potential to reinforce the notion that classroom language learning is a collective as well as an individual endeavour.

Examples of learning tasks that are effective both pedagogically and socially Brainstorming Language teachers often require their students to brainstorm what they collectively know, first in small groups, and then as a whole class, with the teacher or individuals writing words on the board. This task is effective pedagogically because it establishes prior student knowledge (thus avoiding teaching what some students may already know). It is also effective socially, since it validates prior student knowledge, and may even boost the selfesteem of class members who are unexpectedly able to contribute to the collective knowledge of the class group. In a class that I observed in which English words beginning with a particular letter of the alphabet were brainstormed at the beginning of each lesson, I saw shy students preparing words from their dictionaries for the next day’s lesson, and then calling them out. The class as a whole took pleasure in the sense of achievement displayed by these students, and the sense that everyone could contribute to the group learning experience was reinforced. This particular learning routine became so popular with the class (a beginners’ class containing students who had never formally studied English before) that when they reached the letter ‘z’ before the end of term, the teacher continued the tradition by focusing on words beginning with consonant clusters.

Group listening tasks Language teachers commonly play cassette tapes or videos in class. Although they routinely have an overall pedagogic goal when setting up listening tasks (to develop their students’

listening skills), some teachers are also able to accommodate social goals. One teacher, for example, always let her students compare notes in groups before checking answers with the class as a whole, thus giving opportunities for peer teaching, and for ensuring that students could give answers if asked, even if the answer was not their own. Another teacher of a highlevel class regularly showed current affairs programs during lessons. Even though the students operating individually could only identify individual words, collectively they could produce far more. The teacher would write all the words identified by individuals on the board in such a way that the outline of the story would gradually emerge. When the class watched the video again, they could identify further words and phrases. Eventually, building on student input, and filling in the gaps, the teacher wrote on the board a summary of the item in correct English, which everyone copied down. This guided summary reinforced the notion that the class had completed the task in a collective, collaborative, manner.

Checking answers A common pedagogically-driven classroom practice is to spend class to exercises time checking the answers to grammar exercises. Considering myself a sensitive language teacher, I have always been wary of pouncing on individual students for answers to specific questions.

I know how they must feel when they don’t know the answer, or when they get the answer wrong. However, I have seen teachers checking answers to grammar exercises in such a way that progress towards the social goal of maintaining a spirit of classroom unity is affirmed.

One teacher had developed the strategy of encouraging the class to call out the answers in chorus fashion. The students who were confident that they had the right answer tended to speak louder than the ones who were less sure of themselves. The teacher could then validate and repeat the correct answer, while nodding towards individual students who had got the answer right. Another teacher I observed had developed the technique of asking for answers round the class in a clockwise direction (choosing alternate students each time), thus giving students the opportunity to prepare their answer in advance and, if necessary, to check it quietly with a neighbour. Feedback from the students revealed that they liked this activity, because they considered it democratic: everyone in the room had the opportunity to provide an answer, and nobody was forgotten. Contrary to what I had imagined, it seems that students who are shy, or slow to speak, or who have poor articulation, do not want to maintain a low profile within their classes. They want to contribute to the collective learning of their class groups as much as anyone else.

Working independently in the classroom Language teachers who use a communicative approach normally set up collaborative tasks for class work, and allocate tasks that need to be completed independently for homework.

Such teachers fail to recognize that those moments when everyone in the classroom is working quietly and independently towards the completion of personal learning tasks are in themselves a collective experience that can enhance the solidarity of the class group. One teacher who taught the same class intensively for five hours a day organized a ‘quiet time’ each afternoon, when everyone wrote intensively on the same, mutually-agreed topic. She set up the task by writing on the board a word such as ‘friendship’, and inviting students to brainstorm any thoughts or feelings that the word invoked. She then wrote up phrases and sentences generated by individuals, until the board was filled with words and ideas relating to the theme. Then, before the writing began, she wrote an open-ended first sentence on the board, so that nobody would suffer from writer’s block. Finally, she switched on the tape recorder and played background music of the students’ choice, while the students did free

writing on the topic. As the course progressed, the students wrote for longer and longer periods, and produced lengthier and lengthier pieces of writing. It was as if the class group was unified both by the music and by the knowledge that everyone was writing seriously and thoughtfully about the same topic. By focusing collectively on a single writing task, the class group seemed able to ‘lift’ those who, if left on their own, might have only produced a few sentences. In this situation, the feeling of common purpose appeared to enhance the students’ individual learning.

Oral presentations Many teachers incorporate oral presentations into their programs: times when individual students become the focal point of their class groups, and share information either from their personal experiences or from their research. Oral presentations can have a range of pedagogic purposes. These can include developing students’ confidence to speak before an audience (although this objective may not be achieved), impressing on students the importance of speaking with appropriate transition signals, word stress, intonation patterns, and so on, or giving students the opportunity to practise specific presentation skills (such as using palm cards or overhead transparencies). Many students dread oral presentations, especially if their presentation is to be formally assessed. Teachers who are sensitive to both the pedagogic and social needs of their classes are often able to transform oral presentations into a positive experience that affirms the existence of a spirit of social unity within their class. One of the teachers organized oral presentations for the penultimate week of the course. The students, who were encouraged to speak on any topic, chose topics as diverse as how to mow a lawn the Australian way, the art of Tai Chi, and the process involved in making fashion accessories out of dried fish skins. After each presentation class members asked a range of questions that indicated a high degree of interest in the content of the talks. Presentations such as these indicate that, when given the opportunity to communicate information to fellow class members, and provided they have ownership of the subject matter, individual students have the power to draw their classes together.

Whole-class information gathering tasks In order to encourage the students in their classes to interact freely with one another, language teachers often devise tasks that require students to gather information from their peers. This information commonly relates to personal likes and dislikes, preferences, habits, hobbies, skills, experiences, and so on. I have seen teachers handle information gathering tasks in widely differing ways. Some teachers consider that the task is finished when students have filled out their individual grids. In such cases the information-gathering task has a pedagogic purpose (to practise a new language form, such as, ‘Have you ever …?’) but not a social one. Other teachers intuit the group-building potential of having plenary sessions in which the information gathered by individuals is tabulated and focused on by the class as a whole. This gives students the opportunity to learn more about their classmates. In one class, students from different countries gathered information about one another’s educational systems, and discovered that certain assumptions that they had held for years had been incorrect. Focusing on the content of what people say about themselves, rather than on the form alone, enables classes of language learners to evolve into learning communities, in which students know and respect one another as people.

A social-psychological explanation for teacher behaviour

If we step back and view the teachers’ seemingly unpredictable classroom behaviour from a social as opposed to a pedagogic perspective, we begin to see that experienced language teachers are not behaving in a haphazard way. Rather, their classroom behaviour is governed by an intuitive understanding of certain key principles of group development.

Such teachers sense that if a class group is to operate as effectively as possible, ongoing efforts must be made to ensure that it is (a) developing and/or maintaining its identity as a group, and (b) making significant progress towards the achievement of its collective goals.

These twin goals, as initially outlined by Benne and Sheats (1978) in their functional approach to leadership, are the equivalent of the social and pedagogic priorities of the language teacher identified by Allwright.

Conclusion In this article I suggest that language learning is, by its very nature, a collective endeavour, and that learning takes place most effectively when language classes pull together as unified groups. I have shown that experienced language teachers set up learning tasks to accommodate not only the learning but also the social needs of their students. Such teachers, it seems, have an intuitive understanding of the fact that all language classes are composed of individuals who, with careful handling, can be melded into cohesive learning groups. The evidence suggests that skilful teachers regularly take steps to reinforce the feeling that everyone in the class is progressing along a collaborative language learning path, rather than learning in isolation from one other. It therefore seems that experienced teachers have adopted a class-centred approach to their teaching.

Reflection Despite calls for researchers to take into account the social dimensions of language learning, classroom-based research has for the most part examined classroom interaction from a pedagogic perspective. Researchers have assumed that the twin processes of teaching and learning can be understood without reference to the social context within which they occur.

Teachers, it seems, have shown us an alternative way forward. They have demonstrated through their everyday classroom behaviour that language teaching is a highly complex business that not only involves teaching effectively, but also attending to the social wellbeing of their class groups.

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Hadfield, J. 1992. Classroom Dynamics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Littlewood, W. 1981. Communicative Language Teaching: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Rivers, W. M. 1992. ‘Ten principles of interactive language learning and teaching’ in W. M. Rivers (ed.).

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