Members: Anara, Susie, Nancy, Nadeya, Meili (secretary)
We all agreed that the middle version would be appropriate in our contexts. According to Sinclair, learner training helps learners consider the factors that influence their learning and identify their preferred strategies and which suit their context. These include psychological factors like attitudes, beliefs, learning styles, motivation; affective factors, and also social, cultural and political contexts of the learners (Sinclair, 2000). Such factors influence language learning so it is important for the teacher to design structured and systematic syllabus. Teaching strategies such as applying images and sound like semantic mapping, or metacognitive strategies like planning, evaluating and self-regulating, and also how they can be incorporated into curriculum content. The teacher plays an important role as guide.
Learner-led approach that learners do what they want to do would be difficult for implementation in the exam dominant education in many Asian countries. Besides, for some learners it can be confusing and without directions let alone young learners.
In Dam’s Danish secondary school, the learner-led approach was conducted in that 11-16 year-old pupils were able to design the materials, peer-tutor and evaluate with teacher’s help. The pupils seemed motivated to get involved in the activities and take responsibility for their learning process based on Sinclair 2000. However, as for learner designing materials and activities at their age and level of language ability, we have reservations. It would be interesting to see how the task was actually carried out.
In short, we believe in what Confucius, the philosopher once said ‘If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.’ This tells how important the teacher interrelates with the learner, the teacher-guided /learner decided would be appropriate in our contexts.
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ReplyDeleteIt is clear that the middle of the two approaches seems best for my teaching context. Teachers however, are not trained for this type of learner training. This means that if we wanted to implement the principles of learner training as a Teacher-guided learner decided approach we would need to have an in-service training as the one in Dam's study. Keeping in mind that we need to focus on the explicit process of learning, where the teacher acts as a guide for students to reach their autonomous potential. Learners need to feel free to try different strategies but these strategies should also be constructive and with a clear objective. Learners need to be aware of their own process but also have a modal to follow. To add another quote to the one you proposed Meili, “I hear, I know. I see, I remember. I do, I understand” Confucius
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