LEARNERS

AND LEARNING,
CLASSROOMS AND CONTEXTS
by: Nila Ayu Anggraeni

1. INTRODUCTION
This article addresses the central issue of classrooms, and the issue which is too
seldom addressed: learning. We do not mean teaching, we do not mean performance,
we do not mean ‘work’. This article is really about learning in classrooms, what
makes learning effective and how it may be promoted in classrooms.
This article takes the special context of the classroom seriously, not only because of
its effects on teachers and pupils, but because classrooms are notorious as contexts
which change little. Readers will not be offered yet more tips, but real thinking and
evidence based on what we know about how classrooms change.

1.1 Issues for the language teacher

In this first chapter, the issues we look at are those which are fundamental to
ELT professional practice.

 In the classroom, the teachers want to focus on using English for purposes that
are as real as possible.

Take a few minutes to think about a classroom you know in which the sense of
learning has been really positive. Maybe there has been engagement,
excitement, reflection, an ‘ah-ha’ moment ...

When you have identified the situation do all you can to reconstruct it in your
mind’s eye – recall the room, the conditions, the people and so on. Capture the
concrete details of the things that made that experience possible. If possible,
share this with someone else.

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  The teachers need to keep a sense as individuals and to respond to the different
needs which they have.
Children learn best ...

when they take responsibility for their own learning

when they are actively engaged in their learning

when learning is interactive (as opposed to passive or seat-work)

when they see themselves as successful learners

1.2 What do we know about how languages are learned?

Effective learning ...

occurs when the teacher is invisible

happens when people are willing to be vulnerable

occurs when students take an active role in their learning experiences

happens after failure

does not need a teacher to give students knowledge

happens when the teacher throws out her plans

is when classroom management brings about a positive atmosphere where

students want to learn

1.2.1 The nature of input

Krashen’s (1985) input hypothesis posits that language is picked up, or

acquired. The hypothesis makes a distinction between acquiring language and
learning conscious, attention to language study. The acquisition process is called a
creative construction process, is parallel to that of a child learning its first language.

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 Faerch and Kasper (1983) have suggested that once a language learner has
formulated a hypothesis, it can be tested out in various ways. For example, one way
would be to check in a dictionary or grammar book, or with a teacher or native
speaker.

The notion of comprehensible input has been taken up with the enthusiasm for
a number of reasons.

 The need for meaningful input

 The value of providing input through out-of-class resources
 The usefulness of teachers adjusting their own classroom language

1.2.2 The Process of intake

Intake refers to the ways in which learners process input and assimilate
language to their interlanguage system.

In my class the more you give them that they haven’t had before, the more they grab
it. They eat it up if it’s something new. I mean, my classes, I’ve been very lucky, they
seem to be like that, they just eat all knowledge. (Lodge, 2002: field notes)

1.2.3 The role of interaction in the classroom

Related to the notion of input is output. Learners need practice in producing

comprehensible output (Swain 1985) using all the language resources they have
already acquired.

A study by Pica and Doughty (1985) can be taken as an example of research

looking at the role of group work in language learning.

Learning is what I do as a human, to become a better human. How can exams test
really important learning, like learning to love someone, or learning to cope when that
person dies? I will try to stop beating myself up about not getting ‘A’ grades in exam
because I think I have more to offer to the world than the sum total of my school exam
results. (12 year-old student: Williams, 2002)

1.2.4 The role of error

Errors are now seen as reflections of a learner’s stage of interlanguage

development. Critics were quick to point out the adult's learners can be encouraged to
process error correction in useful ways, and the role of the teacher is to provide

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 feedback which learners can work on in order to refine their understanding and move
to the next stage of interlanguage.

Working in a small group in class is really helpful. You hear everyone’s ideas and you
can say ‘no he doesn’t agree with me’ and why not, and she does and she is sort of
half way and it’s really good because you understand what you think compared with
other people’s views. (14 year-old girl: Carnell, 2000)

1.3 How do differences among learners affect learning processes and teaching
procedures?

Three introspective methods, in particular, have been used.

1. Self-report, responding to interview questions and questionnaires.

2. Self-observation, using diaries or immediate retrospective verbal reports
3. Self-revelation, using think-aloud reports recorded on to cassette as learners
actually perform tasks.

These three introspective methods all depend on learners being able to give clear,
accurate, and honest accounts of what they do.

1.3.1 Aptitude

The problem with the research is that it is not conclusive as to what abilities
constitute aptitude or how these relate to each other factor such as intelligence. These
generally put forward a multi-componential view of aptitude as comprising four
components: auditory ability, grammatical sensitivity, inductive language learning
ability, and memory.

1.3.2 Learning style and learning strategies

The characteristics are now seen as an aspect of cognitive style or learning

style, which can be generally defined as characteristics and preferred way of
approaching learning and processing information.

A closely related orientation to researching language learning style has been to

investigate the strategies that are used by successful language learners. These are
techniques used by learners to deal with input, assimilate new language, store,
retrieve, and practice using it. Oxford (1990), for example, provides a comprehensive

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list which can be used by teachers to prepare students for learning. Two items from
her list are as follows:

 Setting Goal and Objectives

 Setting aims for language learning (informal conversation)
 Short-term objectives (reading a short story)
 Self-Monitoring
 Identifying errors in understanding or producing the new language

Learning styles

The attraction of learning styles is understandable. It reminds teachers that

young people learn in different ways, and that activities for learning should be
varied. However, many issues arise by focusing on learning styles: learners
are viewed as non-changing; matching the teaching with learners’ styles is
impossible; a thin description of learning results; the focus often remains on
teaching rather than learning. Teachers find that using learning styles often results
in dead end. There is a potential trap in focusing on learning styles – it categorises
and obscures the significance of the context and that young people need to
develop a range of styles for different purposes and different contexts
(Lodge, 2003). Young people need to be adaptive learners, so the teacher should
encourage development of a full range of learning approaches.

The concept of learning styles is not robust. A major and comprehensive

review of research found that many of the methods used to identify individual
learning styles were unreliable and that using the idea of matching teaching and
learning styles has a negligible impact (Coffield et al., 2004b). It concluded by
identifying three key issues: ‘labeling, vested interests, and overblown claims’
(2004b: 137). The first author more recently described a DfES booklet on learning
styles as ‘woefully uninformed about research. It is also impractical, patronising,
uncritical and potentially dangerous to students’ (Coffield, 2005). Another report
highlights three problems with using the concept of learning styles. First, the
research evidence of using learning styles is highly variable; second, there is usually
even less evidence relating to classroom use; third, many teachers use it poorly
(Hargreaves, 2004).

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1.3.3 Affective factors

Most discussions have limited affective factors to personality characteristics,

attitudes, and emotional responses to the language learning process.

1.3.4 Motivation for learning English

Two kinds of motivation for learning English:

 needing a language as an instrument

 Wishing to integrate into the activities or culture

1.4 What factors of context should teachers take into account?

 Social factors
Social attitudes towards English language learning will partly determine how
much effort teachers have to put into motivating children, but so will social exposure
to the language.
 Educational factors
The educational system in which teachers work will be or by cultural notions of
authority which affect the potential roles of teachers and learners.

1.5 What roles can teachers and learners play in the learning process?
Learning is an activity of making meaning – construction – not simply of receiving.
The social dimension is always present, and in social contexts collaboration supports
learning. Effective learning has to be regulated by the learner, not the teacher. These
aspects of effective learning are all connected by the fourth feature, meta-learning
being aware of the processes of their learning, how they are learning.

1.5.1 The teacher’s roles and responsibilities

Using a framework suggested by Harmer (1991), it is possible to identify the

teacher in a number of roles in this lesson:

 As a controller of eliciting nationality words

 As assessor of accuracy as students try to pronounce the words
 As corrector of pronunciation

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  As an organizer in giving instruction for the pair work, initiating it, monitoring it,
and organizing it, and organizing feedback
 As prompter while students are working together. Prompter could refer to the
teacher’s role in helping a student to remember and formulate a point
 As a resource, if students need help with words structure during pair work

Teachers show good command of subjects

Teachers plan effectively
Teachers have clear learning objectives
Teachers interest pupils
Teachers make effective use of time
Students acquire new knowledge or skills in their work
Students show positive responses to teaching
Students show engagement and concentration, and are productive
Teachers assess pupils’ work thoroughly and constructively
Teachers use assessment to inform their planning and target-setting
Students understand how well they are doing and how they can improve
(abbreviated from Ofsted, 2003)

1.5.2 The learner’s roles and responsibilities

 One perspective, which applies usefully to situations in which adult learners can
specify discernible needs for learning English
 The second perspective on learner-centredness is that of learners contributing to
the design of language learning activities (Clarke 1989b)
 A third perspective on learner-centredness is that encouraging learners to take on
a greater degree of responsibility for their own successful learning

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 Students are engaged in active participation, exploration and research
Students are engaged in activities to develop understanding and create personal
meaning through reflection
Student work shows evidence of conceptual understanding, not just recall
Students apply knowledge in real world contexts
Students are presented with a challenging curriculum designed to develop depth of
understanding
Teacher uses diverse experiences of students to build effective learning
Students are asked by the teacher to think about how they learn, explain how
they solve problems, think about their difficulties in learning, think about how
they could become better learners, try new ways of learning (Thomas, 2003)
Assessment tasks are performances of understanding, based on higher order
thinking
(abbreviated from Brown and Fouts, 2003)

1.6 What roles can learning materials play?

Adaskou et. al. (1990), developed a useful framework for making decisions
about the cultural content of the material

 The aesthetic tense: by this mean the art, literature, music, media, etc, to be found
in English-speaking cultures.
 The sociological-sense: life and institutions, that is, the nature of family life,
work, leisure, customs, etc.
 The semantic sense: the conceptual system embodied in the language.
 The sociolinguistic sense: by this man such things as politeness conventions.

CONCLUSION

The fundamental issues which affect our professional practice in ELT, and which are under
constant review by researchers into second language acquisition, by theory builders in the
disciplines of applied linguistics, and by a team of teachers working to formulate policies and
practices for their institutions. Good teachers have always take a positively critical approach
to appraising and developing their own and others’ experience, and form the possible
implications of research, especially from studies which are based in the language classroom.
It is one of the ways in which we create our own continuing professional development.

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REFERENCES

Krashen, Stephen. "The input hypothesis and its rivals." Implicit and explicit learning of
languages (1994): 45-77.

Færch, Claus, and Gabriele Kasper, eds. Strategies in interlanguage communication.

Longman, 1983.

Swain, Merrill. "The output hypothesis: Theory and research." Handbook of research in
second language teaching and learning 1 (2005): 471-483.

Pica, T., & Doughty, C. (1985). Input and interaction in the communicative language
classroom: A comparison of teacher-fronted and group activities. Input in second language
acquisition, 115-132.

Oxford, Rebecca L. "Language learning strategies in a nutshell: Update and ESL

suggestions." Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice (2002):
124-132.

Harmer, Jeremy. "The practice of English language teaching." London/New York (2001).

Patton, Ron J., Paul M. Frank, and Robert N. Clarke. Fault diagnosis in dynamic systems:
theory and application. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1989.

Prodromou, Luke. "What culture? Which culture? Cross-cultural factors in language

learning." ELT journal 46.1 (1992): 39-50.

Watkins, Chris; Carnell, Eileen; Lodge, Caroline; Wagner, Patsy and Whalley, Caroline
(2002) Effective Learning (Research Matters Series No. 17). London: Institute of Education
School Improvement Network.