Week 4 Response 2: CLT and Learning Opportunities

As Kuma states in chapter 3, it should remain clear and obvious that a teacher's role--regardless of practice or theory or methodology--is to maximize learning opportunities.  However he also argues that "learning is primarily a personal construct controlled by the individual learner" (44).  Thus, to a large extent we determine what we want to learn and what we will remember from what has explicitly or implicitly been taught to us.  Does this negate the value of teaching as a profession?  Certainly not, as students will not likely seek out information on their own without having been raised to place importance on knowledge and awareness.  Teachers, therefore, become necessary proponents of education in a broader sense--the type of education that occurs outside of the classroom, especially in regards to a foreign or second language.  We must provide learning opportunities but also manipulate the situation in front of us to create more learning opportunities.  This, I think, is what determines the role of the teacher and helps us to understand the type of relationship needed in the language classroom.

In order to maximize learning opportunities, we must be acutely aware of our students' strengths and weaknesses as well as the unique characteristics and experiences that distinguish them from each other.  This is achieved through listening.  Teachers so often want to talk and be heard, but we must learn to be quiet and consider the "voices" of our students instead.  By doing so, we can form more meaningful questions or comments and, consequently, create a more authentic and meaningful environmental for language use and practice.  In esssence:

"the classroom teacher is only one of the participants--one with greater competence and authority, of course--but only a participant nonetheless, and as such s/he cannot afford to ignore any contributory discourse from other partners engaged in a joint venture to 'accomplish lessons'" (54)

The teacher is a facilitator and an adviser, but must perform these tasks only as needed, allowing greater freedom and creativity from the students themselves.  This is such a hard balance to achieve, compounded by the numerous demands placed upon us by the curriculum, achievement tests, and time restrictions.

These two readings also made me think about the cooperation-competition dichotomy and how this impacts student motivation, participation, and overall learning.  How does CLT or Critical Pedagogy affect these differently?  I believe CLT places more emphasis on competition than CP does, simply because the goals of these two frameworks are different.  Surely, they both aim to promote language learning and proficiency, but CP has the added objective of transforming society, which tends to overshadow its language goals.  How will students react to either of these styles of teaching?  I think each will be met with some level of resistance by the students, because they do advocate for collective achievement.  This can lead to stifled motivation, lack of participation, and less learning in general.  Why is this so?  I believe such results are a consequence of the educational system and its objectives as they are defined by the society we live in.  We constantly strive to be the best in every aspect of the word, and this transfers to our educational philosophies as teachers and students alike.  If we began teaching our children to think collectively from an early age, perhaps this resistance would not be so strong by the time they began learning a second or foreign language.