At the start of this blog in January, I decided to write about Allwright and Hanks’ five propositions about learners which appear in their book: “The Developing Language Learner”.
I wanted to wait for this third one, learners are capable of taking learning seriously, to coincide with the anniversary of the death of the Hungarian composer Kodály Zoltán, 43 years ago this weekend.
He believed that we should take our children seriously. Kodály attended the university I teach in now, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, where he studied modern languages as well as music and then did his PhD in linguistics and philosophy.
He then specialised in music, but was particularly interested in the methodology of teaching music. He was inspired, not surprisingly given his multi-faceted education, by different philosophies of education which he had studied and, after 1945, many of his child-developmental methods were implemented in state schools in Hungary.
Locating practical ELT methods and techniques within more general educational theories
His contextualisation of music teaching in general pedagogy is something which ELT is also enriched by when it is related to wider pedagogies.
Finding ways of relating ELT methodologies to educationalists and psychologists such as Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky, Rogers, Freire, Donaldson, Pestalozzi, Fröbel, Bloom and Kolb can potentially enhance our classroom practice immensely.
Scott Thornbury gave a talk recently for a teachers’ association in Berlin where he located ELT within broader pedagogies, it would be interesting to hear who other people have been influenced by, other than more well-known ELT names.
My father believed that teachers always benefited from a good knowledge of the history and sociology of education as well as the psychology of learning and
he helped me to find a Post Graduate Certificate in Education course in ELT in Manchester where these subjects were dealt with, as well as more specific and more practical ELT methods and techniques. I remember writing about the history of women in education and anti-racism across the curriculum.
Kodály was very interested in teaching and teacher training as well as music, and how to improve musical literacy in schools. He argued passionately that everyone is capable and has the right to musical literacy.
Legyen a zene mindenkié! (let music be for everybody)
If anybody is interested in finding out more about the methods he is associated with click here.
Learners are capable of taking learning seriously
Kodály’s belief that we should take our children seriously is echoed in Allwright’s and Hanks’ third proposition that learners are capable of taking learning seriously.
“If learners are key practitioners, then we must take them seriously, as serious people…A good many experienced languge professionals consider that the learners they know are really not serious about learning. Around the world what seems to concern teachers most, for example, is their learners’ apparent lack of motivation.
There are distinguished exceptions, but the general picture is largely negative. We can expect teachers who perceive their learners that way to treat them as people incapable of being serious about learning. But experience also tells us that people tend to conform to what others expect of them, and expectations can work positively as well as negatively.
Whether or not learners are serious about their learning is a matter of great social importance in the classroom. Some learners even hide their seriousness of purpose to avoid the social consequences of being thought too keen. The teacher then gets a false impression of their attitude to learning. So it may help to treat learners as being capable of taking learning seriously, even if their behaviour suggests otherwise.”
Recently on Scott Thornbury’s A-Z of ELT site on A for Authenticity some of these ideas have been discussed within the framework of whether to ask students the question “Do you understand” or not.
One of the most interesting discussions I have regularly with students is about the topic of cheating. 10 years ago, with the help of Susan Holden and the British Council, we published a book here in Hungary for 14-18 teenage learners called “Zoom In”. One of the activities was to discuss different methods of cheating. Click on the coursebook page to see the activity.
In the classroom, this usually leads to a fascinating exploration of what is learning, what is knowledge and how students define being in classrooms.
Finally on the nature/nurture continuum, we all find ourselves as teachers at different places. Some of us lean more towards nature and some to nurture as the most important factors in the development of a child’s intelligence. This then influences what difference we believe education can make to a child.
I think that taking learners seriously and not mistrusting them and not thinking the worst of them is one of the key variables in creating the conditions for good language learning. What do you think?
And finally have a listen to the song “Nights in the mountains” by Kodály Zoltán
or, if you prefer,here’s another version by a girl’s choir in Györ