Express Publishing ELT

Do you know the scene in Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian” where a crowd has gathered outside his house and are chanting as one. Brian tells them they don’t need to follow a leader; that they are all individuals, to which they reply all together: “Yes, we’re all individuals! We’re all individuals!” Then a lone voice pipes up from the back: “I’m not.”
The crowd are repeating learned chunks of language and copying what they hear. This can be quite mindless. The guy at the back is listening to what’s going on and making a personal response, selecting his own language to do so.

In our classrooms, there’s a place for choral repetition to cement language and give opportunities to students to try it out before being asked to individually speak, but we want to move on to helping our students become able to say what they want. Not what we tell them to say. Of course there has to be input; some sort of presentation of language which is mostly comprehensible to the learners, they need to tune into it, practice and produce it. At elementary levels, the language is necessarily limited. However, here too learners can speak for themselves. They will make mistakes, but that is only normal.

Good language learners are risk takers, are more interested in communicating meaning rather than getting the form right, are good at seeing patterns, actively seek opportunities to use and study the language themselves and can self-monitor. (Do females have a better aptitude for languages than males? Their brains seem to be wired for the sort of things that enhance language acquisition.)

Learners’ progress may be hampered by personal factors such as lack of confidence, intelligence (whatever that is), poor social integration – there’s a problem with the group dynamics, and lack of motivation.(It’s not interesting. Why should I do this exam just because my parents want me to?) There may be an “affective filter” at work – the English language or English / American culture may be poorly regarded.

What can the teacher do, taking such factors into account, to help learning and acquisition be as effective as possible?

First, a note on the difference between the terms above. Acquisition is the natural, unconscious way we pick up our mother tongue. Learning is a conscious process. So, what to do?

- Make the classroom atmosphere positive. Praise, encourage, use variety.
- Individualise. Be aware of the individuals in your group; their strengths and weaknesses, interests and aims. Encourage them to talk about themselves, experiences and topics of interest to them.
- Give problem solving tasks in which they can work together.
- Encourage autonomy by teaching dictionary skills, eliciting rather than giving vocabulary and rules, giving research projects and encouraging extensive reading and listening, testing progress regularly.
- If you are a native speaker, beware of coming across as arrogant. (One advantage of being an “outsider” is that you can be seriously interested in what the students have to tell you about their culture and language.)
- Use humour. Be accepting (except of deviant behaviour).

“What have the Romans ever done for us, eh?” rhetorically asks the leader of a revolutionary group of zealots in the Python film. It turns out the Romans have been rather a good thing actually (roads, baths, law and order etc). Do not ask what your teacher has done for you; ask what you have done for your teacher yourself.