Dale T Griffee, of Seigakuin University in Japan. In the December 95 edition of ?The Language Teacher? (JALT, Tokyo) describes an experiment with the learner-centred approach. Griffee appears to be neither an opponent nor a passionate promoter of the methods and has obviously tried to assess them dispassionately. He identifies eight characteristics of learner-centred classroom instruction.?

1. Students define their own needs
2. They have to develop an awareness of their own learning styles
3. They have to be able to use various learning strategies.
4. They are expected to set their own goals. ?The rationale is that students cannot take responsibility for their own learning if they do not know what they want to learn. Because only the learners can learn (the teacher cannot learn for them), and only the learners know their own learning needs, only the learners can state their learning goal or goals.
5. Learners negotiate the curriculum? ?that is to say they decide the content and organisation of their learning activities.
6. Learners give feedback. They evaluate the course on a regular basis, in some cases week?by-week. They may even chair meetings. Each student may even have a personal tutor assigned to him for regular consultation.
7. Learners study and engage in self-directed learning outside the class (projects, etc.)
8. ?Learners need to be proficient in self-assessment.? They have to be? able to judge the accomplishment of the learning goals they have negotiated.

He tried the methods out on two second-year conversation courses in a Japanese private university consisting in all of 33 learners majoring in American and British culture. They were between 19 and 22 years old and each class had one 90 minute lesson each week. Among the difficulties he cites are the following.

• It is often very difficult for learners identify their own goals or to articulate them clearly. They tend to use very general language.

• It takes a very long time to get some classes in Japan even to sit down in groups without a lot of teacher prompting. ?Students entered class late and still sat there like bumps on a log until I insisted they get up and move the tables to form a group.?

• The size and shape of the rooms teaching traditionally takes place in rarely favours anything but very frontal styles of teaching. Even the furniture gets in the way.

• The principle of not using one central textbook with the whole class and allowing students to choose textbooks if they want to use one means that in practice ?a few students have a textbook of their choice and many students have no textbook at all?.
  本新闻共10页,当前在第04页  01  02  03  04  05  06  07  08  09  10