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Learning Languages in schools: Making a difference through reflection on practice

Martin East
Abstract: 

The learner-centred and experiential pedagogical approach encouraged by the revised New Zealand Curriculum can be problematic for teachers who are used to delivering courses in teacher-fronted ways. Using the Learning Languages learning area as the context, this article presents the case of one New Zealand teacher who completed an initial teacher education programme in 2016 and who, in the course of the year-long programme, was required to shift her thinking and practice from teacher-led to learner-centred. Her story usefully documents a teacher’s journey from tradition to innovation, and illustrates what can be achieved through teacher reflection on practice.

Journal issue: 

Learning Languages in schools

Making a difference through reflection on practice

Martin East

Key points

The Learning Languages learning area of the revised New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) focuses on helping learners to communicate effectively in an additional language.

NZC also encourages a learner-centred, experiential approach to learning.

Teachers often teach in teacher-led ways, based on their own learning experiences; this can be problematic for delivering on NZC expectations.

Being confronted with learner-centred ideas, trying them out, and reflecting on what happens may be useful catalysts for change.

This article documents one language teacher’s shift in thinking and practice from teacher-led to learner-centred.

The learner-centred and experiential pedagogical approach encouraged by the revised New Zealand Curriculum can be problematic for teachers who are used to delivering courses in teacher-fronted ways. Using the Learning Languages learning area as the context, this article presents the case of one New Zealand teacher who completed an initial teacher education programme in 2016 and who, in the course of the year-long programme, was required to shift her thinking and practice from teacher-led to learner-centred. Her story usefully documents a teacher’s journey from tradition to innovation, and illustrates what can be achieved through teacher reflection on practice.

Introduction

It is just over 10 years since The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) was revised (Ministry of Education, 2007). Made mandatory from the start of 2010, NZC has encouraged a learner-centred and experiential pedagogical approach. This approach is built on putting into practice, through learning experiences, seven values and five key competencies, each of which points to the development of student-centred learning skills such as autonomy, self-reliance, and peer collaboration.

The pedagogical focus of the values and key competencies is no longer on the teacher, to be regarded as the “expert” delivering knowledge in a top-down teacher-led way from the front of the classroom. This behaviourist stance towards knowledge generation has been replaced by an approach that shifts the focus onto the learners, and their key role in knowledge generation through interaction with others. This sociocultural view of learning now sees the role of the teacher as one of “facilitator”—someone whose expertise is still to be valued and acknowledged, but in a co-constructive way that supports learners’ own knowledge discovery.

NZC also saw the introduction of a new learning area, Learning Languages. This new area places strong emphasis on students learning how to communicate successfully in another language. On the one hand, the launch of Learning Languages was hailed as a significant development that would help to raise the profile and status of language learning in New Zealand schools. On the other hand, student take-up of courses in additional languages has not always been positive. Teachers of languages often seem to face persistent challenges of demotivated students, small classes, and extensive attrition as students move up the school system (East, 2008; 2012b; Ward & East, 2016).

I argued in East (2012b) that small classes and attrition may be because programmes in additional languages have not always been motivating, enjoyable, and satisfying for students. Courses have “frequently been delivered in a teacher-fronted, step-by-step, hierarchical way where attention to grammatical rules has been seen as an important pre-cursor to effective communication” (p. 132). Long (2000) suggests that such an approach “tends to produce boring lessons, with resulting declines in motivation, attention, and student enrollments” (p. 182).

The “best motivational intervention” may be “to improve the quality of our teaching” (Dörnyei, 2001, p. 26). NZC has been a useful catalyst for teachers of all subject areas to consider more learner-centred, experiential, and co-constructive approaches to teaching and learning. But despite innovations that encourage more learner-centred approaches, Van den Branden (2009) suggests that teachers are often “still standing in front of a group of students with a piece of chalk in their hand” (p. 659).

Shifting teachers from the traditional to the innovative

Teachers often teach “in the way they themselves were taught, and show strong resistance toward radically modifying the teaching behavior that they are so familiar with” (Van den Branden, 2009, p. 666). Teachers, it seems, fear the unfamiliar—arguably with good reason: we know where we are with the traditional; the innovative has not been tested.

What can happen, however, when beginning teachers (those new to the profession who are undergoing initial teacher education) are exposed to, and required to enact in classrooms, innovative practices in the broader context of NZC? As a teacher educator working with the next generation of teachers of languages in schools, I am mindful of the tension between more traditional teacher-fronted approaches and a more innovative learner-centred pedagogy. My own students often arrive in my classroom at the beginning of the year with language-learning experiences that are more aligned with the traditional model. In various ways I seek to enhance my students’ practices so that they align more effectively with curriculum expectations. This article presents the case of one of my students: a New Zealand teacher who completed her postgraduate initial teacher education programme in 2016 and who, in the course of the year-long programme, was confronted with innovative practices and was required to consider their implications. Let’s call her Anne.1

The programme in which Anne took part included 16 weeks on campus interspersed with two 7-week blocks of practicum work in two different schools. The arrangement provided opportunities for her to grapple with theoretical ideas, try out these ideas on practicum, come back to campus to reflect on how that had gone, and try things out again in a different context. These opportunities were designed to mirror the Teaching as Inquiry cycle advocated in NZC (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 35).

The innovation in question is Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT)—a learner-centred and experiential pedagogy based on the principle that “the most effective way to teach a language is by engaging learners in real language use in the classroom … by designing tasks—discussions, problems, games, and so on—which require learners to use language for themselves” (Willis & Willis, 2007, p. 1). This approach counters a traditional pedagogy that begins with teacher-driven grammar explanation and practice. TBLT focuses rather on learners’ own discovery of the rules of language through language use. A perceptual drawback to TBLT, however, is an understanding that its focus on experiential learning leaves no place for teacher-led instruction, consequently leading teachers to be anxious that, when left to their own devices, learners will not learn anything (East, 2012a).

In New Zealand, advocacy of TBLT in the context of NZC owes much to the publication of ten principles for effective instructed second language acquisition, published in a Ministry of Education-commissioned document that sat alongside curriculum reform (Ellis, 2005). As I explained in East (2012a), Ellis makes clear links between the ten principles and TBLT. However, the principles can also be realised through more established approaches. As NZC began to be implemented, the ten principles became more readily promoted and grasped than TBLT itself, and the TBLT approach has not been in the forefront of teachers’ minds in the way that the principles have become. A focus on TBLT in my own work as an educator of language teachers has enabled me to re-emphasise the clear links, and my courses have had a dedicated focus on TBLT since 2012.

What Anne (and other course participants) had to wrestle with was how to enact an innovation (TBLT) in the face of their own prior learning experiences and a more traditional teacher-fronted approach. At different points, participants in the Learning Languages pathway of the programme completed several written reflections, designed to reveal their ongoing learning and developing perspectives. This article draws on several data sources2 to tell Anne’s story:

1.an initial reflection on TBLT before Anne had spent any time in schools but after she had had an opportunity to read about TBLT (Week 3)

2.a final reflection on TBLT after Anne had completed two practicum placements (Week 26)

3.an assignment that asked participants to consider an aspect of TBLT that they found challenging (Week 29)

4.a summative conversation with Anne about her perspectives as presented in her coursework (Week 30).

Anne’s case is presented here as a valuable example for other practising teachers both of how Anne came to terms with innovation and of how she wrestled with the place of what she at least perceived as the “best” elements of “tradition” (teacher-fronted elements)—for her, the “challenge” of TBLT.

Anne’s initial reflections

Coming up through the New Zealand school system in the late 1990s, and before the advent of either NZC or the NCEA, Anne acknowledged, “I was taught languages through a very grammar-oriented teacher-led approach.”

For Anne, a typical lesson was “based around the textbook very much, and we would just work through that.” There was also “just working through the grammar … and then grammar worksheets.” She commented, “I don’t remember ever doing much in the way of … anything like a task.” Speaking practice was done in pairs, but this would be “reading the textbook aloud to one another.” The assessment of speaking at the end of the year “was meant to be a conversation, but it was all written down and it was all memorised.”

As Anne began to engage with TBLT ideas, she was initially “unsure” and “unconvinced of the benefits of TBLT.” This was because “I was only thinking about the way I was taught when I was at school, and I guess I just assumed that is what I would be doing.” TBLT was “completely new to me” and “kind of blew my mind a little bit.” She commented, “it just didn’t make sense to me why we needed to look at this different method, because I got really good marks in my exams” and “because I really like the grammar side of things … I personally enjoy no-nonsense grammar exercises, rote learning vocabulary, etcetera.”

Anne may well have had “a very good knowledge base in terms of grammar structures and vocabulary.” However, when faced with a real French-speaking environment on a school exchange to France in Year 11, she recalled that “myself and my classmates became overwhelmed with the oral use of the language, as we had not had much experience of practising ‘real-life’ situations using French.”

Recognising this limitation contributed to what she described, at the start of the year, as “the main advantage I can see of using a TBLT approach,” that is “the opportunity to give students the freedom to experiment with the language, resulting in the students becoming more effective communicators” as well as “capturing students’ interests and therefore keeping them motivated.” She recognised this as “vital” in light of NZC and the Learning Languages emphasis on “students’ ability to communicate” as the central objective (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 24). There was, after all, “no point in being able to get 100% on a written exam or grammar test if you then go to France and struggle to communicate.” This was surely the “whole point of learning languages.”

As Anne began to develop her understanding of TBLT in theory and in practice, her two practicum placements were illuminating and informative.

First practicum

On her first practicum, “both of my ATs [associate teachers] were very much about getting the students up and interacting with each other and … doing a variety of tasks or task-like activities.” Anne noted that Mike (one of her ATs whom she described as “an advocate of TBLT”) “spoke in the target language pretty much the whole time, all classroom instructions.” She continued, “for Year 10 French it was all in French, and Year 11 Spanish all in Spanish.” This was “something that was different to when I was at school.” Mike also “explained everything in the language, and so that was something that was different.” She conceded, “sometimes if the class was feeling lost he would explain things in English, but quite often I was amazed about how much he used French and Spanish the whole time.”

In Mike’s class there was “a lot of getting students up and moving round and talking to each other, which I thought was really good.” She continued that this learner-centred approach “was really cool to see.”

Second practicum

Anne’s second practicum was “very different.” Anne was working with Year 9 and 10 French classes with one teacher, Sue, whom she described as “very, very, very traditional.” There was “not much in the way of student interaction” and “no tasks at all being implemented in the classroom.” This was “more like what I saw when I was at school.” Sue’s delivery “was always a teacher-led lesson in the form of students copying down notes and grammar rules from a PowerPoint, followed by practising the grammar by quietly doing exercises in their workbooks.” The students were “really reserved … I guess because they weren’t used to speaking French, they were really kind of shy and not used to making mistakes … because it was all textbook-based things.” When Anne talked to Sue about incorporating tasks into lessons, her response was “no, we don’t do that.”

Fortunately, and despite Sue’s own traditional approach, she was “happy to let me try anything I wanted to with the class,” and Anne was “able to try some communicative tasks with a Year 10 French class.” In the first few lessons, the students were “very reluctant to speak to one another and the classes were painfully quiet.” However, “by my final week of teaching” the students were “using language and speaking with each other and moving around,” and were “all very engaged in the tasks and seemed much more at ease verbally using the target language to negotiate meaning and communicate with one another.” Anne noted that Sue “seemed very surprised and sometimes shocked at the high level of engagement the students demonstrated during speaking tasks.” This, to Anne, “absolutely confirmed and reinforced the advantages of a task-based language teaching approach.”

Anne commented that the students “seemed to like speaking to one another. I think it was a bit of a novelty for them” and “they were acting like they enjoyed it.” However, “at the end of one lesson Sue’s feedback was ‘yes, but they didn’t write any of the rules down’.” It seemed that “to her, it was not a very good lesson, because they didn’t have anything concrete in their books.”

Anne’s final reflections

As Anne considered what she had learnt by the end of the course, she noted, “my biggest challenge over this whole year has been coming to terms with the fact that the approach to language teaching in New Zealand has changed a lot since I first started learning in 1998.”

Thinking about her two very different practicum experiences, she commented, “it was interesting to contrast that experience of that [Sue’s] class with Mike’s Year 10 class.” Having now been “exposed to TBLT theories,” it seemed obvious to Anne that Sue’s lessons “were absolutely in need of some communicative tasks.” She went on to say, “I’m really glad I got to see that [Mike] in action first.” She noted, “I think, if I had seen that [Sue] first, it would have made me more confused, because it didn’t sit in line with what we were doing in class here [at uni].”

Having noted that “during my time at both practicum schools I had the opportunity to implement some task-based lessons into my teaching, and experience the benefits first-hand,” Anne concluded, “I believe that TBLT is an excellent means of keeping students engaged and motivated.”

In essence, what Anne was experiencing was a significant theoretical and practical shift from top-down and teacher-led to learner-centred and experiential. Nevertheless, her practicum placements revealed the reality that not all classroom teachers were ready to implement a revised pedagogy. She noted, “I often felt limited on practicum by the views held by my associate teachers and at times felt obliged to ‘conform’ to be in line with their style of teaching.”

Having reached the end of the year, as Anne reflected on her own significant shifts in thinking and practice, she articulated two challenges that could arguably work against more wholehearted adoption of learner-centred pedagogies.

Challenge 1

Anne commented, “I now believe the main drawback and limitation of task-based language teaching is teachers’ resistance to change” [my emphasis]. Anne advocated for “the need for ongoing PD.” This, in her view, needed to be “for heads of department in particular as well as for individual teachers.” It seemed to Anne that “in some cases classroom teachers can be extremely restricted in the way they run their lessons if their department is not flexible or supportive of their willingness to change and adapt lessons … therefore making the use of TBLT a challenge.”

Challenge 2

An associated challenge with a learner-centred and experiential pedagogy is a perception that the onus for knowledge discovery rests solely with the learners, and that there is consequently no place for teacher input. Apprehension that this may be ineffective for learning may hold teachers back from considering the innovation. In Anne’s words, a sense of “no place for teaching” was one of the “common misconceptions” about TBLT that she needed to confront. She reflected, “I thought that because TBLT had such a strong focus on communication, grammar would be neglected … as a lover of grammar, I struggle with the idea of this.”

Addressing the challenges

In fact, Anne’s reading around TBLT led her to realise that teachers did have an interventionist role to play. She came to recognise that TBLT:

1.fosters the development of communicative fluency but does not neglect accuracy

2.can be used in tandem with a more traditional approach (Ellis, 2009).

These were “the two things that I have learned the most over the course of this year.” She saw herself as “very lucky” to have had Mike as an AT on her first practicum, since she “got to observe him using tasks in his classes, as well as explicit grammar teaching” [my emphasis], even though he “didn’t spend as much time on it as I would have expected.”

With regard to the concept of leaving the grammar explanation to after the task, Anne commented, “at first I thought it didn’t make sense when the grammar is looked at afterwards … and I found that really hard … it seemed backwards to me.” She reflected, “as a learner myself I would have found that frustrating because I would have wanted to know the rules first before I am trying to use it.” However, “now, after teaching some classes and trying to do TBLT in my classes, I can see how … if you give them, maybe, the formulaic expression [the language they need to complete the task] … you don’t actually need to explain it explicitly for them to be able to use it in the task.” She continued, “I can see how looking at the grammar patterns explicitly [post-task] can maybe make more sense, because they have already used it and they can see the pattern.”

Key lessons learnt

As Anne reflected on the entire year’s learning, she volunteered, “I have changed my initial opinion of approaches to language teaching since the beginning of the year.” At the start of the course, “I previously only had my own experiences as a language learner to base my opinions on.” By the end, through both theory and practice, “my eyes have been opened to a whole different methodology that I previously knew nothing about.” She explained:

Contrary to my initial ideas of language teaching, I can now understand that the ability to only conjugate verbs correctly or memorise vocabulary lists will mean little in the ‘real world’ to students if they are not able to communicate with a certain level of fluency and improvisation in the target language, which is an important skill that can be developed through the use of tasks.

She concluded, “I wish I had learned with a TBLT approach.” As for the impact of the programme on future teaching, Anne argued, “I feel like we are lucky as beginning teachers, as we have not yet become ‘stuck in our ways’ and have an amazing opportunity to be able to develop our own teaching style and philosophy as we embark on this journey.” She noted, “as I begin my teaching career I hope to incorporate tasks into my lessons as much as possible.”

Bottom line … a balanced approach

What might Anne’s future teaching style and philosophy look like? Regarding TBLT, Anne mused:

There are so many advantages in terms of communication, and that’s the whole point. That’s the main point. It gives students the confidence to be able to make the mistakes when they’re speaking because they are getting the meaning across and they are experimenting with language.

This was “something I didn’t get a chance to do [at school], which is why I still have issues with speaking.” Nevertheless, “for me, grammar will always be important.” Her solution? “When it comes to grammar teaching and TBLT, it is all about finding the balance.” Anne concluded, “practising to use the language through a variety of communicative tasks in the language classroom alongside a more traditional focus on form [grammar] is a balanced approach to learning and teaching languages” [my emphasis]. Embracing the innovative does not mean that all traditional elements need to be abandoned.

Personal perspective

NZC and the Learning Languages learning area hold out promise, but also expose uncertainties and challenges to existing practices. Teachers, it seems, fear TBLT because learner-centred tasks are at the forefront and teachers are uncertain what role, if any, they are to play in this experiential environment (East, 2012a).

In my role as an educator of language teachers, my primary concern is to help the teachers I work with to become effective classroom practitioners. When it comes to learning an additional language successfully in the context of NZC, I believe there are several crucial questions that teachers need to consider: does a learner-centred and experiential classroom mean that teachers must abandon all use of planned and scheduled “teacher-led moments”? If not, what is the place for teacher-directed input in classrooms that are supposed to be learner-centred? In other words, how do teachers shift their thinking and practices from behaviourist teacher-centric classroom pedagogy to socioculturally informed student-centred learning activities in ways that do not throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Mike, it seems, has enthusiastically embraced innovation … but he still accepts the crucial need for teacher input and explanation. Sue, by contrast, appears to be resisting innovation … but her work with Anne seems to have opened her eyes to look at alternative possibilities. In turn, Anne, it would appear, is willing to embrace aspects of TBLT in her future practice, but (a grammar lover herself) says she will still maintain traditional teacher-led elements. She sees this as not incompatible with learner-centredness.

Ultimately, I believe that Anne’s case usefully documents a teacher’s journey from tradition to innovation, leading to a balanced position that is convincing and workable, at least for her. Her position also confronts the misperception that a learner-centred and experiential approach to language learning such as TBLT leaves no room for guided instruction. Ten years on from NZC and a new learning area, I offer Anne’s case as an example of someone in my teacher preparation course who “got it” in terms of an approach that embraces innovation whilst not eschewing tradition. As regards where to next for Anne (and where to for other teachers), the Teaching as Inquiry cycle encouraged in NZC provides an important means of exploring and evaluating the effectiveness of a task-based pedagogy in real classrooms. I hope that Anne’s case will be reassuring for those teachers who might shy away from innovation because “we’ve always done it like this,” and will be an encouragement for teachers to inquire into their own practices with regard to implementing something they may not have tried before.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Anne for her willingness to make her story known as an example of one teacher’s journey into hitherto unfamiliar territory.

Notes

Further reading

An engaging example of practice

TKI (2014). Immersion learning—Right from day 1. Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Key-competencies/Key-competencies-and-effective-pedagogy/Engaging-examples-of-practice/Immersion-learning

A useful sourcebook of New Zealand teachers’ stories

East, M. (2012). Task-based language teaching from the teachers’ perspective: Insights from New Zealand. Amsterdam /Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tblt.3

New Zealand pre-service and in-service teachers’ responses to TBLT in theory and practice

East, M. (2014a). Encouraging innovation in a modern foreign language initial teacher education programme: What do beginning teachers make of task-based language teaching? The Language Learning Journal, 42(3), 261–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2013.856455

East, M. (2014b). Mediating pedagogical innovation via reflective practice: A comparison of pre-service and in-service teachers’ experiences. Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 15(5), 686–699. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2014.944128

References

Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational strategies in the language classroom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667343

East, M. (2008). Learning additional languages in New Zealand’s schools: The potential and challenge of the new curriculum area. Curriculum Matters, 4, 113–133.

East, M. (2012a). Task-based language teaching from the teachers’ perspective: Insights from New Zealand. Amsterdam / Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tblt.3

East, M. (2012b). Working towards a motivational pedagogy for school programmes in additional languages. Curriculum Matters, 8, 128–147.

Ellis, R. (2005). Instructed second language acquisition: A literature review. Wellington: Ministry of Education.

Ellis, R. (2009). Task-based language teaching: Sorting out the misunderstandings. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 19(3), 221–246. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2009.00231.x

Long, M. (2000). Focus on form in task-based language teaching. In R. D. Lambert & E. Shohamy (Eds.), Language policy and pedagogy: Essays in honor of A. Ronald Walton (pp. 179–192). Amsterdam / Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/z.96.11lon

Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington, NZ: Learning Media.

Van den Branden, K. (2009). Diffusion and implementation of innovations. In M. Long & C. Doughty (Eds.), The handbook of language teaching (pp. 659–672). Oxford, UK: Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444315783.ch35

Ward, D., & East, M. (2016). Is language learning languishing? Stakeholders’ perspectives on the provision of secondary school foreign language programmes in New Zealand. The New Zealand Language Teacher, 42, 44–62.

Willis, D., & Willis, J. (2007). Doing task-based teaching. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Martin East, an experienced secondary school teacher of languages, is now an educator of language teachers in the School of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the Faculty of Education and Social Work, the University of Auckland. He is also currently President of the New Zealand Association of Language Teachers.

Email: m.east@auckland.ac.nz

1All teacher names in this article are pseudonyms.

2Anne’s case is not presented here as an isolated instance of teacher engagement with innovation. Rather, her case is situated within far broader research into language teacher reception of innovation in which I have been engaged since the required implementation of NZC in 2010 (see Further Reading).