Colin Campbell, Hanna Kryszewska
Learner-Based Teaching
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the people from whom we have learned so much: all our students and colleagues everywhere, but especially those at the English Language Centre at the University of Gdansk who willingly participated in the activities and tried out the ideas and who allowed us to include their materials as sample products; and teacher trainers we have met, both in the United Kingdom and in Poland, and the authors of books from which we have also learned. We owe a lot to the following people whose work has inspired us: Mario Rinvolucri, John Morgan, Chris Sion, Alan Maley, and Alan Duff, among others.
We also thank all of those who are dear to us for their support and encouragement.
Finally we would like to acknowledge how much we have learned from each other. Working together was a pleasure.
Hanna and Colin.
The authors and series editor
Colin Campbell began his career in EFL in 1976, and worked in Spain, England, and Italy, where, with a friend, he prepared a series of ten 15-minute programmes teaching English on local television. He did his MA in Applied Linguistics at Reading University, and in 1984 moved to Poland to work as Director of Studies at the British Council/University of Gdansk English Language Centre. From 1995 to 1998 he was ELT Consultant in Estonia for the British Council. Since 1998 he has been working at Reading University where he is now EAP Lecturer and Course Director. He is one of the authors of Options for English (Warsaw 1991), and co-author (with Hanna Kryszewska) of Towards Teaching (Heinemann European Language Classroom series, 1995).
Hanna Kryszewska is a senior lecturer at the University of Gdansk, where she teaches on general and specialized language courses. She also teaches methodology and trains future teachers on pre-service young learners courses at the Institute of Pedagogy at the University of Gdansk. She also runs courses on English language children’s literature with a pedagogical slant, and is a trainer and visiting speaker on CELTA and DELTA courses. She is the co-author of Towards Teaching and Observing English Lessons, a video-based teacher training course, and contributed extensively to the The Stand-by Book and The Teen Book for teachers. She is co-author of a series of coursebooks for the reformed Polish secondary schools entitled ForMat. She is an external reviewer of coursebooks admitted for use in Polish state and oral examiner for Cambridge ESOL exams. She has travelled extensively in Europe, running courses and giving presentations at conferences.
Alan Maley worked for The British Council from 1962 to 1988, serving as English Language Officer in Yugoslavia, Ghana, Italy, France, and China, and as Regional Representative in South India (Madras). From 1988 to 1993 he was Director-General of the Bell Educational Trust, Cambridge and from 1993 to 1998 he was Senior Fellow in the Department of English Language and Literature of the National University of Singapore. From 1998 to 2003 he was Director of the Graduate Programme at Assumption University, Bangkok. He is now a freelance consultant. Among his publications are Literature, in this series, Beyond Words, Sounds Interesting, Sounds Intriguing, Words, Variations on a Theme, and Drama Techniques in Language Learning (all with Alan Duff), The Mind’s Eye (with Françoise Grellet and Alan Duff), Learning to Listen and Poem into Poem (with Sandra Moulding), Short and Sweet, and The English Teacher’s Voice.
Foreword
In the kind of classrooms with which most of us are familiar it is normal and expected that teachers will make most, if not all, of the decisions about the teaching content and materials. And that, in a majority of cases, teaching will be based on some sort of published or pre-determined materials.
This book presents a radical alternative to both these assumptions.
In the first place, the learners take over much of the decisionmaking normally assigned to teachers. The approach makes learner-input central to the learning process. It is the learners themselves who become the major teaching resource. It shows how, by tapping into the knowledge and experience of the learners, the quality of the learning process is enhanced, since it becomes both more relevant and more deeply felt. There is a sense in which the teacher becomes a learner and learners are transformed into teachers.
In the second place there is a clear move away from dependence on the pre-determined content and format of published materials: every class will bring its own unique mix of individuals and their past experiences; every lesson will generate a unique set of needs. This freedom from dependence on sophisticated materials or technology makes the approach especially suitable for resource-poor environments, and it is perhaps no accident that the authors developed it in Poland where, at the time, access to such facilities was rare.
There are clear links between this approach and the current trend towards Learner Autonomy, Self-directed Learning, and Learner Independence. Perhaps unusually however, the emphasis here is on Learner Independence in the group mode rather than the individual self-study mode.
Among its ancillary advantages is its power as a tool for teacher development. No teacher taking this route can fail to develop both as a person and as a professional.
The approach offers an exciting and rewarding alternative to those teachers willing to try it. It undoubtedly takes courage to cast off from the security of control and pre-determined materials, to trust to the power of process and of learner-input, but the rewards are correspondingly great.
Alan Maley
Introduction
The main principle in learner-based teaching is that all class activities can be done using information that the learners themselves bring to the class. All humanistic approaches to teaching accept that some language input can