Answer:
All teachers and learners bring with them a
philosophy of what teaching and learning is.
This philosophy is more likely to be implicitly
rather than explicitly held, especially by lear-
ners, and so taken for granted. Such philoso-
phies are formed by our own experiences of
education and learning from the earliest days
of childhood onwards. We all accept as being
the norm those educational experiences which
are part of our socio-cultural context. Only
when we are able to experience other approa-
ches, are we able to question and evaluate our
own.
Pedagogic principles and practice are instilled
in trainee teachers and they carry these into
the classroom with them. Very rarely are the
roles of teachers and learners examined and
questioned. In spite of efforts to encourage
learner development, learner independence
and even autonomous learning, most class-
room situations are still teacher-centred. This
is not a criticism, simply a reporting of reality
from several observational studies. It’s not
surprising. Traditional approaches provide
security for all concerned. However, the richest
learning environment will be created by
teachers with the range of knowledge and
skills to vary their approach to suit individuals
and specific groups and contexts.
It is also difficult to measure language lear-
ning qualitatively. Language is not a body of
knowledge, a set of facts, which can be me-
morised and regurgitated for the purposes of tests
and examinations. It is an innate human ability
and as such organic. It grows and develops in
favourable environments, shrivels with neglect
and is affected by emotional factors. There are
various levels of competencies which can be
measured but each performance of language
will be different from the next. Spoken com-
petence is the most immediate but also the
most fragile and volatile. We all know how arti-
culate, erudite and focussed we can be when
sitting in a relaxed group of friends and putting
the world to rights. But can we do the same
in front of an audience? Or at a job interview?
Or in the courtroom? Or when we’re tired,
unwell, in or out of love? Every human factor
affects our ability to use even our mother
tongue competently and all these factors are
carried over into second language contexts.
