Student false beliefs: Preamble

Teaching Academic English: The Independent Learner 

This series of comments and posts is based mostly on my experience of teaching adult students at two Universities and one language college in Australia and in Schools and Universities overseas. I have also tutored adults on a one to one basis in Australia. The most numerous group of students might be Chinese-but there have also been significant numbers of South Americans-Brazilians in particular, Indians. Malaysians, Vietnamese, Japanese, Koreans, Saudis  and some  Europeans. I have also taught in schools in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and Africa

These insights might form the basis of a series of workshops for teacher trainees or for the professional development of lecturers on teacher training programs

Most teachers  (who are not teaching just for the money)  would agree that one major objective of good teaching is to produce an autonomous learner-someone who is able to learn independently of the teacher. The Universities and Business College in Australia  which deliver much  Academic English unfortunately do not have this as a main objective: at best they pay only lip-service to it.  At worst, they covertly discourage independent learning. An independent learner by definition is independent of the teacher and the University-and as such will not pay more fees for tuition. There is a clear conflict of interest here between the interests of the University and the student.

Getting out of the passenger seat

I was teaching a friend how to drive recently. In fact she already is a qualified driver-but only for an automatic car. She wants to learn to drive a manual because they are cheaper  to buy. She is a refugee so this would be an important saving for her.

Basically, it has been difficult because she has completely underestimated the task. Although she has the road sense skills from her driving an automatic she does not know how tricky it is to manage the manual transmission.

After three long lessons she was quite depressed and I thought she was going to give up.

Today, at the beginning of the fourth lesson, I got out of the car and asked her to drive on her own around the car park area and along some deserted service roads in the deserted factory complex. At the end of the lesson she was so grateful. She said she felt much more confident and thought that some day she would learn to enjoy driving a manual car.

It is a similar situation with teaching English. At some point the teacher has to get out of the car and let the learner drive on her own.

Unfortunately the language ‘Industry’ has a direct vested interest in NOT letting this happen-they want the student to continue learning for ever –so they can keep collecting money from them. This is a conflict of interest for many Universities and language colleges. It is an issue I will return to again and again in this series of posts.

Only experienced teachers have direct knowledge about autonomous learning..Younger teachers  may have been told about it or read about it, but will not have direct experience of it. It is something which is appreciated only with experience.  

However, teaching programs in Universities and Colleges  will often recruit younger  teachers –as it is good for their bottom line..they are cheaper. This is just one of the many problems which have come about by allowing business and commercial interests  to  hijack the teaching  and  learning profession. Even the language has changed-teaching language is no longer ‘Education’ taught by ‘Lecturers’ –it is ‘training’ delivered by ‘Instructors’.  The focus of the language learning process  has changed  from being an empowering learning experience for learners into a commercial product to be sold to ‘customers’. Often, this product is sold  by marketers who don’t know the difference between language learning and a bar of soap.  The impact of business on Language goes well beyond this of course- the commercial imperative  has grossly distorted pedagogy and methodology –but that is another story entirely –perhaps for another series of posts

When the students take their final exam or test they either pass or fail. Most passes and now consider themselves good or even perfect users (and learners) of English.  They may carry this mistaken belief about themselves with them for the rest of their lives. While ot may be true it is not necessarily so. It is yet another mistaken belief they will add to the myriads of others they have about learning. We teachers know that only a few of these ‘successes’ are genuine autonomous learners. Most have simply learned how to pass the test-an important skill-but nothing to do with independent learning.

Those who fail are waiting for a better teacher to teach them a better course. This is another mistaken belief because there is really not that much difference between courses or teachers. It goes without saying that none of the failures are autonomous learners either.

I estimate that of all the students I have taught only about twenty percent were autonomous  learners after they exited the program-and many of these were autonomous before they even entered it!

This is a sad and sorry state of affairs for the teacher who wants  to produce autonomous and independent learners. It is also a  disgraceful state of affairs from the point of view of the Universities and Colleges who claim to be educating students to be independent learners.

The question is why is it like this?

One of the reasons students don’t become independent learners is certainly because of the commercial imperative as I have already explained. Basically the managers (not the teachers ) of the program don’t care about independent learning. Their KPIs are based on student input numbers. Bums on seats. 

However, another reason  is because of the  mistaken beliefs and preconceptions the students bring to the course. These preconceptions and mistaken beliefs come from their own personal educational history –and to some extent from their own personalities. They bring these to the course and they wreak absolute havoc with their progress towards  autonomous  learning.

This series of posts will look at some the misconceptions and mistaken beliefs adult students bring with them to Australia. However, the general theme of commercialisation of language delivery will never be far away!