Thanks, Steve. Indeed, with your permission, I'm going to use it, with ellipses, because the classroom situation was not uniquely language. It's for a classroom of freshmen learning college skills. A student complained that I had made finding a handout for an assignment into a "challenge" (it's, God help us, modeled on "Survivor"--no, no one is voted out). She said, "you're not fulfilling your role as a teacher." I tried to explain that my role is not just to hand out materials, but to help students become independent learners. If the computer generation can't even find things on Blackboard or log into their campus e-mail accounts, how do we expect adult language learners to navigate technology successfully? No, I wouldn't expect ELLs to go searching for "content," but this was a situation where I had every reason to expect that this would not be a problem. Students are uncomfortable with student-centered learning.
Best regards,
Bonnie Odiorne, Ph.D.
Director, Writing Center, Adjunct Professor
Post University, Waterbury, CT
bonniesophia at sbcglobal.net

--- On Fri, 9/26/08, Steve Kaufmann <steve at thelinguist.com> wrote:

From: Steve Kaufmann <steve at thelinguist.com>
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2546] Re: The "Decoding" of words, sentences, and paragraphs
To: "The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List" <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>
Date: Friday, September 26, 2008, 10:55 AM



It is curious that funding goes into content. There is an explosion of free content on the Internet, from  podcasts, radio stations, and elsewhere. This often in downloadable MP3 format with transcript and includes beginner "learner" content and authentic content. Content is easy to create. Teachers and students are doing so all over the world. This can all be shared at little cost. I have always found the production of essentially redundant language text books to be a tremendous waste of resources. By the same token, the MP3 player and the Internet make expensive language labs redundant and obsolete, yet they are still being set up at schools and colleges.

I think that the role of the teacher needs to change from that of someone who is explaining the language, to that of someone who is turning students into independent language learners,and someone teaching the skills of language exploration and language learning,providing encouragement, feedback, guidance and support. Technology makes it possible for one teacher to affect the lives of hundreds of learners at a time, not just the few who are in his or her classroom.

Undoubtedly the students are not used to student-centered learning, and are classroom dependent. Most learners expect that the teacher is going to teach them the language. As a result, most do not do very well. If learners recognize that it is what is done outside the classroom that matters the most, and if they are encouraged and shown how to learn, I think that a far greater number will improve in their language skills.

Steve


On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 6:52 AM, Martin Senger <MSenger at gecac.org> wrote:




Pax Steve!
 
I agree 100% with you Steve about the content issue. That is why I try to get my students to find their own study material. However, the students themselves are not used to student-centered education, as opposed to teacher-centered. Very few educational systems around the globe stress the student's role in their own education, apart from memorization.
 
But another problem currently is that most funding for education goes toward specific content, and not necessarily learning skills. Alas.
 
Ciao!
 

Martin E. Senger
Adult ESL / Civics Teacher,
G.E.C.A.C. / The R. Banjamin Wiley Learning Center
ESL Co-Director,
PAACE
Erie, Pa



-- 
Steve Kaufmann
www.lingq.com
1-604-922-8514
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