Learner-Centered Methods

Learner-Centered Methods

So arguing, Newmark (1966) adopted the view that complex bits of language are learned a whole chunk at a time rather than learned as an assemblage of constituent items. He declared that language-centered pedagogy with its emphasis on sequential presentation, practice, and production of isolated linguistic items “constitutes serious interference with the language learning process” (p. 81)

In making such a bold declaration, he was clearly ahead of his time. Although his provocative thoughts had to wait for full deployment until the advent of learning-centered methods (see chap. 7, this volume), they certainly highlighted the inadequacy of language-centered methods, and prompted the search for an alternative method.

The search was accelerated by a congruence of important developments in social sciences and humanities. Interestingly, almost all of the developments either occurred or became prominent in the 1960s, precisely when dissatisfaction with language-centered pedagogy was growing. As we saw in chapter 1, in linguistics, Chomsky demonstrated the generative nature of the language system and hypothesized about the innate ability of the human mind to acquire it. Halliday provided a different perspective to language, highlighting its functional properties. In sociolinguistics, Hymes proposed a theory of communicative competence incorporating socio- cultural norms governing language communication. Austin’s speech act theory elaborated on how language users perform speech acts such as requesting, informing, apologizing, and so forth. In psychology, behaviorism was yielding its preeminence to cognitivism, which believed in the role of human cognition as a mediator between stimulus and response. Sociologists were developing communication models to explain how language is used to construct social networks.

A development that was unrelated to the academic disciplines just mentioned, but one that hastened the search for an alternative method, was the formation of European Economic Community (EEC), a common market of Western European countries, a precursor to the current European Union (EU). By deliberate policy, the EEC eased trade and travel restrictions within multilingual Europe, which in turn provided an impetus for greater interaction among the people of the Western European countries and, consequently, provided a raison d’etre for developing a function-oriented language teaching pedagogy in order to meet their specific communicative needs. In 1971, the Council of Europe, a wing of EEC, commissioned a group of European applied linguists and entrusted them with the task of designing a new way to teach foreign languages.

Learning from the shortcomings of language-centered pedagogy and drawing from the newly available psychological and linguistic insights, Wilkins, a British applied linguist who was a member of the group commissioned by the Council of Europe, proposed a set of syllabuses for language teaching. Originally published as a monograph in 1972, a revised and expanded version of his proposals appeared in 1976 as a book titled Notional Syllabuses. Instead of merely a grammatical core, the new syllabus consisted of categories of notions such as time, sequence, quantity, location, and frequency, and categories of communicative functions such as informing, requesting, and instructing. The notional/functional syllabus, as it was known, provided a new way of exploiting the situational dialogue inherited from the past by indicating that formal and functional properties can after all be gainfully integrated. Thus began a language teaching movement which later became well-known as communicative method or communicative approach or simply communicative language teaching.

The watchword here is, of course, communication; there will be more on this later.It should be kept in mind that communicative language teaching is not a monolithic entity; different teachers and teacher educators offered different interpretations of the method within a set of broadly accepted theoretical principles so much so that it makes sense to talk about not one but several communicative methods. In what follows, I look at, in detail, thetheoretical principles and classroom procedures associated with communicative language teaching, treating it as a prototypical example of a learner-centered pedagogy.

6.1. THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES

The conceptual underpinnings of learner-centered pedagogy are truly multidisciplinary in the sense that its theory of language, language learning,and language teaching came not only from the feeder disciplines of linguistics and psychology, but also from anthropology and sociology as well as from other subdisciplines such as ethnography, ethnomethodology, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. The influence of all these areas of inquiry is very much reflected in the theory of language communication adopted by learner-centered pedagogists.

6.1.1. Theory of Language

In order to derive their theory of language, learner-centered pedagogists drew heavily from Chomskyan formal linguistics, Hallidayan functional linguistics, Hymsian sociolinguistics, and Austinian speech act theory. In chapter 1, we discussed how these developments contributed to our understanding of the nature of language. Let us briefly recall some of the salient features.

Criticizing the basic tenets of structural linguistics, Chomsky pointed out that language constitutes not a hierarchical structure of structures as viewed by structuralists, but a network of transformations. He demonstrated the inadequacy of structuralism to account for the fundamental characteristics of language and language acquisition, particularly their creativity and uniqueness. Whereas structuralists focused on “surface” features of phonology and morphology, Chomsky was concerned with “deep” structures, and the way in which sentences are produced. Chomskyan linguistics thus fundamentally transformed the way we look at language as system.

However, preoccupied narrowly with syntactic abstraction, it paid very little attention to meaning in a communicative context. Going beyond the narrowness of syntactic abstraction, Halliday emphasized the triple macrofunctions of language—textual, interpersonal, and ideational. The textual function deals with the phonological, syntactic, and semantic signals that enable language users to understand and transmit messages. The interpersonal function deals with sociolinguistic features of language required to establish roles, relationships, and responsibilities in a communicative situation. The ideational function deals with the concepts and processes underlying natural, physical, and social phenomena. In highlighting the importance of the interplay between these three macrofunctions of language, Halliday invoked the “meaning potential” of language,that is, sets of options or alternatives that are available to the speaker–hearer.

It was this concern with communicative meaning that led Hymes to question the adequacy of the notion of grammatical competence proposed by Chomsky. Unlike Chomsky who focused on the “ideal” native speaker–hearer and an abstract body of syntactic structures, Hymes focused on the “real” speaker–hearer who operates in the concrete world of interpersonal communication. In order to operate successfully within a speech community, a person has to be not just grammatically correct but communicatively appropriate also, that is, a person has to learn what to say, how to say it,when to say it, and to whom to say it.In addition to Hallidayan and Hymsian perspectives, learner-centered pedagogists benefited immensely from Austin’s work. As we know, he looked at language as a series of speech acts we perform rather than as a collection of linguistic items we accumulate, an idea that fitted in perfectly with the concept of language as communication. We use language, Austin argued, to perform a large number of speech acts: to command, to describe,to agree, to inform, to instruct, and so forth. The function of a particular speech act can be understood only when the utterance is placed in a communicative context governed by commonly shared norms of interpretation.

What is crucial here is the illocutionary force, or the intended meaning, of an utterance rather than the grammatical form an utterance may take.By basing themselves on speech-act theory and discourse analysis, and by introducing perspectives of sociolinguistics, learner-centered pedagogists attempted to get closer to the concreteness of language use. Accordingly,they operated on the basis of the following broad principles:

Language is a system for expressing meaning;the linguistic structures of language reflect its functional as well as communicative import;basic units of language are not merely grammatical and structural, but

also notional and functional;the central purpose of language is communication; and communication is based on sociocultural norms of interpretation shared by a speech community.

In short, unlike language-centered pedagogists who treated language largely as system, learner-centered pedagogists treated it both as system and as discourse, at least some of the features of the latter (cf. chap. 1, this volume).

6.1.2. Theory of Language Learning

Learner-centered pedagogists derived their language learning theories mainly from cognitive psychologists, who dismissed the importance given to habit formation by behaviorists, and instead focused on insight formation. They maintained that, in the context of language learning, the learner’s cognitive capacity mediates between teacher input (stimulus) and learner output (response). The learner, based on the data provided, is capable of forming, testing, and confirming hypotheses, a sequence of psychological processes that ultimately contribute to language development.

Thus, for cognitive psychologists, mental processes underlying response is important, not the response itself. They also believed in developmental stages of language learning and, therefore, partial learning on the part of the learner is natural and inevitable. Because of the active involvement of the learner in the learning process, only meaningful learning, not rote learning, can lead to internalization of language systems (for more details,see the section on intake processes in chap. 2, this volume).

Consistent with the theory of language just discussed, learner-centered pedagogists looked at language communication as a synthesis of textual, interpersonal, and ideational functions. These functions, according to Breen and Candlin (1980), involve the abilities of interpretation, expression, and negotiation, all of which are intricately interconnected with one another during communicative performance. They suggest that language learning is most appropriately seen as communicative interaction involving all the participants in the learning and including the various material resources on which the learning is exercised. Therefore, language learning may be seen as a process which grows out of the interaction between learners, teachers, texts  and activities. (p. 95)

It must not be overlooked that in foregrounding the communicative abilities of interpretation, expression, and negotiation, learner-centered pedagogists did not neglect the importance of grammar learning. As Widdowson (2003) recently lamented, the concern for communicative function was misconstrued by some as a justification for disregarding grammar.

“But such a view runs directly counter to Halliday’s concept of function where there can be no such disjunction since it has to do with semantically encoded meaning in form. This concept of function would lead to a renewed emphasis on grammar, not to its neglect” (p. 88, emphasis in original). As a matter of fact, learner-centered pedagogists insisted that language learning entails the development of both accuracy and fluency,where accuracy activity involves conscious learning of grammar and fluency activity focuses on communicative potential (Brumfit, 1984).

In a recent interpretation of the learning objectives of communicative language teaching, Savignon (2002, pp. 114–115) considers the five goal areas, (known as Five Cs: communication, cultures, connections, compari-sons, and communities) agreed upon as National Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the United States as representing a holistic, communicative approach to language learning:

 The communication goal area addresses the learner’s ability to use the target language to communicate thoughts, feelings, and opinions in a variety of settings;the cultures goal area addresses the learner’s understanding of how the products and practices of a culture are reflected in the language;the connections goal area addresses the necessity for learners to learn to use the language as a tool to access and process information in a diversity of contexts beyond the classroom;the comparisons goal area are designed to foster learner insight and understanding of the nature of language and culture through a comparison of the target language and culture with the languages and cultures already familiar to them; and the communities goal area describes learners’ lifelong use of the language, in communities and contexts both within and beyond the school setting itself.These learning goals, Savignon rightly asserts, move the communicative language teaching toward a serious consideration of the discoursal and sociocultural features of language use.

6.1.3. Theory of Language Teaching

As can be expected, learner-centered pedagogists took their pedagogic bearings from the theories of language and language learning outlined above. Consequently, they recognized that it is the responsibility of the language teacher to help learners (a) develop the knowledge/ability necessary to manipulate the linguistic system and use it spontaneously and flexibly in order to express their intended message; (b) understand the distinction,and the connection, between the linguistic forms they have mastered and the communicative functions they need to perform; (c) develop styles and strategies required to communicate meanings as effectively as possible in concrete situations; and (d) become aware of the sociocultural norms governing the use of language appropriate to different social circumstances (Littlewood, 1981, p. 6).In order to carry out the above responsibilities, it was argued, language teachers must foster meaningful communication in the classroom by Designing and using information-gap activities where when one learner in a pair-work exchange knows something the other learner does not;offering choice of response to the learner, that is, open-ended tasksand exercises where the learner determines what to say and how to say it;emphasizing contextualization rather than decontextualized drills and pattern practices; using authentic language as a vehicle for communication in class;introducing language at discoursal (and not sentential) level;tolerating errors as a natural outcome of language development; anddeveloping activities that integrate listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills.These and other related measures recognize the importance of communicative abilities of negotiation, interpretation, and expression that are considered to be the essence of a learner-centered pedagogy.Such recognition also entailed a reconsideration of the role played by teachers and learners in a communicative classroom. Breen and Candlin(1980) identified two main roles for the “communicative” teacher.

The first role is to facilitate the communicative process between all partici-

pants in the classroom, and between those participants and the various activi-

ties and texts. The second role is to act as an interdependent participant within

the learning-teaching group. This latter role is closely related to the objective

of the first role and it arises from it. These roles imply a set of secondary roles

for the teacher: first, as an organizer of resources and as a resource himself.

Second, as a guide within the classroom procedures and activities. In this role

the teacher endeavors to make clear to the learners what they need to do in

120 CHAPTER 6order to achieve some specific activity or task, if they indicate that such guid-

ance is necessary. (p. 99, emphasis as in original)

The learners have to take an active role too. Instead of merely repeating af-

ter the teacher or mindlessly memorizing dialogues, they have to learn to

navigate the self, the learning process, and the learning objectives.

6.1.4. Content Specifications

In order to meet the requirements of the learning and teaching principles

they believed in, learner-centered pedagogists opted for a product-oriented

syllabus design just as their language-centered counterparts did before

them, but with one important distinction: Whereas the language-centered

pedagogists sought to select and sequence grammatical items, learner-

centered pedagogists sought to select and sequence grammatical as well as

notional/functional categories of language. Besides, they put a greater pre-

mium on the communicative needs of their learners. It is, therefore, only

natural that a learner-centered curriculum is expected to provide a frame-

work for identifying, classifying, and organizing language features that are

needed by the learners for their specific communicative purposes. One way

of constructing a profile of the communicative needs of the learners is “to

ask the question: Who is communicating with whom, why, where, when,

how, at what level, about what, and in what way?” (Munby, 1978, p. 115).

The 1970s witnessed several frameworks for content specifications geared

toward a learner-centered pedagogy. As mentioned earlier, Wilkins (1972)

proposed a notional/functional syllabus containing an inventory of

semantico-grammatical notions such as duration, frequency, quantity, di-

mension, and location, and communicative functions such as greeting, warn-

ing, inviting, requesting, agreeing, and disagreeing. His syllabus was further

expanded by another member of the Council of Europe, van Ek (1975) who,

based on a detailed needs analysis, identified the basic communicative needs

of European adult learners, and produced an inventory of notions, functions

and topics as well as grammatical items required to express them. Munby’s

(1978) book titled Communicative Syllabus Design contains an elaborate taxon-

omy of specifications of communicative functions, discourse features and

textual operations along with micro- and macroplanning.

Any textbook writer or language teacher can easily draw from such in-

ventories and taxonomies to design a syllabus that addresses the specific

needs and wants of a given group of learners. Finocchiaro and Brumfit

(1983) in their well-known book, The Functional-Notional Approach: From The-

ory to Practice, provided detailed guidelines for teachers. Here is part of a

sample “mini-curriculum” adapted from their work:

Title and

Function Situation

Communicative

Expressions Structures Nouns Verbs Adj. Adv.

Structure

Words Activities

Apologizing Theater (asking

someone to

change seats)

Excuse me.

Would you mind

...?

I’m very grateful.

V+ ing seat

place

friend

move

change

Dialogue study

Roleplay

Paired practice

Apologizing Department

store

(Returning

something)

I’m sorry.

Would it be pos-

sible...?

Simple past

Present perfect

shirt buy

wear

small too you Aural compre-

hension

Indirect speech

Requesting

directions

At the bus stop I beg your par-

don.

Could you tell

me...?

Interrogatives

(simple pres-

ent)

Modal must

names of places must

get to

get off

take

how

where

us Reading

Questions and

answers

Cloze procedure

Dictation

(Adapted from Finocchiaro & Brumfit, 1983, p. 38)

122The sample units make it clear to the teacher and the learner what commu-

nicative function (e.g., apologizing) is highlighted and in what context

(e.g., theater, store, etc.) as well as what grammatical structures/items and

vocabulary are needed to carry out the function. They also indicate to the

teacher possible classroom activities that can be profitably employed to re-

alize the learning and teaching objectives.

The focus on the learner’s communicative needs, which is the hallmark of

a learner-centered pedagogy, has positive as well as problematic aspects to it.

There is no doubt that identifying and meeting the language needs of spe-

cific groups of learners will be of great assistance in creating and sustaining

learner motivation, and in making the entire learning/teaching operation a

worthwhile endeavor. Besides, a need-based, learner-centered curriculum

will give the classroom teachers a clear pathway to follow in their effort to

maximize learning opportunities for their learners. Such a curriculum easily

facilitates the designing of specific purpose courses geared to the needs of

groups of learners having the same needs (such as office secretaries, air traf-

fic controllers, lawyers, or engineers). However, as Johnson (1982) correctly

pointed out, if we are dealing with, as we most often do, groups of learners

each of whom wishes to use the language for different purposes, then, it may

be difficult to derive a manageable list of notions and functions. The Council

of Europe attempted to tackle this practical problem by identifying a “com-

mon core” of functions such as greeting, introducing, inviting, and so forth

associated with the general area of social life alongside other specialized,

work-related units meant for specific groups of learners.

Yet another serious concern about specifying the content for a learner-

centered class is that there are no criteria for selecting and sequencing lan-

guage input to the learner. Johnson (1982), for instance, raised a few possi-

bilities and dismissed all of them as inadequate. The criterion of simplicity,

which was widely followed by language-centered pedagogists, is of little use

here because whether a communicative function or a speech act is simple

or complex does not depend on the grammatical and discoursal features of

a function but on the purpose and context of communication. A second

possible criterion—priority of needs—is equally problematic because, as

Johnson (1982) observed, “questions like ‘Do the students need to learn

how to apologize before learning how to interrupt ?’ have no clear answer” (p.

71). Practical difficulties such as these notwithstanding, the learner-cen-

tered syllabus provided a clear statement of learning/teaching objectives

for classroom teachers to pursue in their classroom.

6.2. CLASSROOM PROCEDURES

The content specifications of learner-centered pedagogy are a clear and

qualitative extension of those pertaining to language-centered pedagogy,

an extension that can make a huge difference in the instructional design.

But, from a classroom procedural point of view, there is no fundamental dif-

ference between language-centered pedagogy and learner-centered peda-

gogy. The rationale behind this rather brisk observation will become appar-

ent as we take a closer look at the input modifications and interactional

activities recommended by learner-centered pedagogists.

6.2.1. Input Modifications

Unlike the language-centered pedagogist, who adopted an almost exclusive

form-based approach to input modifications, learner-centered pedagogists

pursued a form- and meaning-based approach. Recognizing that successful

communication entails more than structures, they attempted to connect

form and meaning. In a sense, this connection is indeed the underlying

practice of any method of language teaching for, as Brumfit and Johnson

(1979) correctly pointed out,

no teacher introduces “shall” and “will” (for example) without relating the

structure implicitly or explicitly to a conceptual meaning, usually that of futu-

rity; nor would we teach (or be able to teach) the English article system with-

out recourse to the concepts of countableness and uncountableness. (p. 1)

What learner-centered pedagogists did, and did successfully, was to make

this connection explicit at the levels of syllabus design, textbook produc-

tion, and classroom input and interaction. Notice how, for example, the

minicurriculum cited (section 6.1.4) focuses on the communicative func-

tion of “apologizing,” while at the same time, identifying grammatical struc-

tures and vocabulary items needed to perform that function.

In trying to make the form-function connection explicit, language-

centered pedagogists assumed that contextual meaning can be analyzed

sufficiently and language input can bemodified suitably so as to present the

learner with a useable and useful set of form- and meaning-based learning

materials. Such an assumption would have been beneficial if there is a one-

to-one correspondence between grammatical forms and communicative

functions.We know that a single form can express several functions just as a

single function can be expressed through several forms. To use an example

given by Littlewood (1981)

the speaker who wants somebody to close the door has many linguistic op-

tions, including “Close the door, please,” “Could you please close the door?,”

“Would you mind closing the door?,” or “Excuse me, could I trouble you to

close the door?” Some formsmight only performthis directive function in the

context of certain social relationships—for example, “You’ve left the door

open!” could serve as a directive from teacher to pupil, but not from teacher

to principal. Other forms would depend strongly on shared situational knowl-

edge for their correct interpretation, and could easily be misunderstood (e.g.

“Brrr! It’s cold, isn’t it?”). (p. 2)

Similarly, a single expression, “I’ve got a headache” can perform the func-

tions of a warning, a request, or an apology depending on the communica-

tive context.

Language input in learner-centered pedagogy, then, can only provide

the learner with standardized functions embedded in stereotypical con-

texts. It is almost impossible to present language functions in a wide range

of contexts in which they usually occur. It is, therefore, left to the learner to

figure out how the sample utterances are actually realized and reformu-

lated to meet interpretive norms governing effective communication in a

given situation. Whether the learner is able to meet this challenge or not

depends to a large extent on the way in which interactional activities are

carried out in the classroom.

6.2.2. Interactional Activities

To operationalize their input modifications in the classroom, learner-

centered pedagogists followed the same presentation–practice–production

sequence popularized by language-centered pedagogists but with one im-

portant distinction: Whereas the language-centered pedagogists presented

and helped learners practice and produce grammatical items, learner-

centered pedagogists presented and helped learners practice and produce

grammatical as well as notional/functional categories of language. It must,

however, be acknowledged that learner-centered pedagogists came out

with a wide variety of innovative classroom procedures such as pair work,

group work, role-play, simulation games, scenarios and debates that en-

sured a communicative flavor to their interactional activities.

One of the sources of communicative activities widely used by English

language teachers during the1980s is Communicative Language Teaching—An

Introduction, by Littlewood (1981). In it, he presents what he calls a “meth-

odological framework,” consisting of precommunicative activities and com-

municative activities diagrammatically represented as

Stating that these categories and subcategories represent differences of em-

phasis and orientation rather than distinct divisions, Littlewood explains that

through precommunicative activities, the teacher provides the learners with

specific knowledge of linguistic forms, and gives them opportunities to prac-

tice. Through communicative activities, the learner is helped to activate and

integrate those forms for meaningful communication. The teacher also pro-

vides corrective feedback at all stages of activities, because error correction,

unlike in the language-centered pedagogy, is not frowned upon.

Littlewood suggests several classroom activities that are typical of a

learner-centered pedagogy. For example, consider the following activity:

And another:

Discovering Missing Information

Learner A has information represented in tabular form. For example,

hemay have a table showing distances between various towns or a foot-

ball league table showing a summary of each team’s results so far (how

many games they have played/won/lost/drawn, how many goals they

have scored, etc.). However, some items of information have been de-

leted from the table. Learner B has an identical table except that dif-

ferent items of information have been deleted. Each learner can

therefore complete his own tale by asking his partner for the informa-

tion that he lacks.

As with several previous activities, the teacher may (if he wishes) spec-

ify what language forms are to be used. For example, the distances ta-

ble would require forms such as “How far is . . . from . . . ?” “Which

town is . . . miles from . . . ?,” while the league table would require

forms such as “How many games have ...played?” and “How many

goals have . . . scored?.”

(Littlewood, 1981, p. 26)

Pooling Information to Solve a Problem

Learner A has a train timetable showing the times of trains from X to

Y. Learner B has a timetable of trains from Y to Z. For example:

Learner A’s information:

Newtown dep. : 11.34 13.31 15.18 16.45

Shrewsbury arr. : 12.22 14.18 16.08 18.25These two examples illustrate functional communication activities. The

idea behind them is that “the teacher structures the situation so that learn-

ers have to overcome an information gap or solve a problem. Both the stim-

ulus for communication and the yardstick for success are thus contained

within the situation itself: learners must work towards a definite solution or

decision” (Littlewood, 1981, p. 22). The activities are intended to help the

learner find the language necessary to convey an intended message effec-

tively in a specific context. The two sample activities show how two learners

in a paired-activity are required to interact with each other, ask questions,

seek information, and pool the information together in order to carry out

the activities successfully.

Social interaction activities focus on an additional dimension of lan-

guage use. They require that earners take into consideration the social

meaning as well as the functional meaning of different language forms.

Consider the following activities:

Learner B’s information:

Shrewsbury dep. : 13.02 15.41 16.39 18.46

Swansea arr. : 17.02 19.19 20.37 22.32

Together, the learners must work out the quickest possible journey

from Newtown to Swansea. Again, of course, it is important that they

should not be able to see each other’s information.

(Littlewood, 1981, pp. 34–35)

Role Playing Controlled Through Cues and Information

Two learners play the roles of a prospective guest at a hotel and the ho-

tel manager.

Student A: You arrive at a small hotel one evening. In the foyer, you

meet the manager(ess) and:

Ask if there is a room vacant.

Ask the price, including breakfast.

Say how many nights you would like to stay.

Ask where you can park your car for the night.

Say what time you would like to have breakfast.As Littlewood (1981) explains,

themain structure for the interaction now comes fromlearner A’s cues. A can

thus introduce variations and additions without throwing B into confusion.

For the most part, B’s role requires him to respond rather than initiate,

though he may also introduce topics himself (e.g. by asking whether A would

like tea). (p. 53)

In carrying out this social interaction activity, learners have to pay greater

attention to communication as a social behavior, as the activity approxi-

mates a communicative situation the learners may encounter outside the

classroom. The focus here is not just formal and functional effectiveness,

but also social appropriateness.

As these examples indicate, classroom procedures of learner-centered

pedagogy are largely woven around the sharing of information and the ne-

gotiation ofmeaning. This is true not only of oral communication activities,

but also of reading and writing activities. Information-gap activities, which

have the potential to carry elements of unpredictability, freedom of choice,

and appropriate use of language, were found to be useful and relevant. So

were role-plays, which are supposed to help the learners get ready for the

“real world” communication outside the classroom. One of the challenges

facing the classroom teacher, then, is to prepare the learners to make the

connection between sample interactions practiced in the classroom and

the communicative demands outside the classroom. Whether this transfer

from classroom communication to “real world” communication can be

achieved or not depends to a large extent on the role played by the teachers

as well as the learners.

To sum up this section and to put it in the framework of the three types

of interactional activities discussed in chapter 3, learner-centered peda-

gogists fully endorsed interaction as a textual activity by emphasizing form-

based activities, that is, by encouraging conscious attention to the formal

properties of the language. They also facilitated interaction as an interper-

sonal activity by opting for meaning-based activities, by attempting to make

Student B: You are the manager(ess) of a small hotel that prides itself

on its friendly atmosphere. You have a single and a double room va-

cant for tonight. The prices are: £8.50 for the single room, £15.00 for

the double room. Breakfast is £1.50 extra per person. In the street be-

hind the hotel, there is a free car park. Guests can have tea in bed in

the morning, for 50p.

(Littlewood, 1981, pp. 52–53)the connection between form and function explicit, and by helping the

learner establish social relationships in the classroomthrough collaborative

pair and group work. To a limited extent, they promoted interaction as an

ideational activity, which focuses on the learner’s social awareness and iden-

tity formation by encouraging learners at the higher levels of proficiency to

share with others their life experiences outside the classroom and by orga-

nizing activities such as debates on current affairs. The degree to which the

objectives of these types of activities were fully realized is bound to vary

from class to class and from context to context.

6.3. A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT

Perhaps the greatest achievement of learner-centered pedagogists is that

they successfully directed the attention of the language-teaching profession

to aspects of language other than grammatical structures. By treating lan-

guage as discourse, not merely as system, they tried to move classroom

teaching away from a largely systemic orientation that relied upon a me-

chanical rendering of pattern practices and more toward a largely commu-

nicative orientation that relied upon a partial simulation of meaningful ex-

changes that take place outside the classroom. By considering the

characteristics of language communication with all earnestness, they be-

stowed legitimacy to the basic concepts of negotiation, interpretation, and

expression. They highlighted the fact that language is a means of conveying

and receiving ideas and information as well as a tool for expressing per-

sonal needs, wants, beliefs, and desires. They also underscored the creative,

unpredictable, and purposeful character of language communication.

Of course, the nature of communication that learner-centered peda-

gogists assiduously espoused is nothing new. It has long been practiced in

other disciplines in social sciences such as communication studies. But what

is noteworthy is that learner-centered pedagogists explored and exploited

it seriously and systematically for the specific purpose of learning and

teaching second and foreign languages. It is to their credit that, although

being critical of language-centered pedagogy, they did not do away with its

explicit focus on grammar but actually extended it to include functional

features as well. In doing so, they anticipated some of the later research

findings in second-language acquisition, which generally supported the

view that

form-focused instruction and corrective feedback provided within the con-

text of a communicative programaremore effective in promoting second lan-

guage learning than programs which are limited to an exclusive emphasis on

accuracy on the one hand or an exclusive emphasis on fluency on the other.

(Lightbown & Spada, 1993, p. 105)

The explicit focus on grammar is not the only teaching principle that

learner-centered pedagogists retained from the discredited tradition of

audiolingualism. They also retained, this time to ill-effect, its cardinal belief

in a linear and additive way of language learning as well as its presenta-

tion–practice–production sequence of language teaching. In spite of their

interest in the cognitive–psychological principles of holistic learning,

learner-centered pedagogists preselected and presequenced grammatical,

lexical, and functional items, and presented to the learners one cluster of

items at a time hoping that the learners would learn the discrete items in a

linear and additive manner, and then put them together in some logical

fashion in order get at the totality of the language as communication. As

Widdowson (2003) recently reiterated,

although there are differences of view about the language learning process,

there is a general acceptance that whatever else it might be, it is not simply ad-

ditive. The acquisition of competence is not accumulative but adaptive: learn-

ers proceed not by adding items of knowledge or ability, but by a process of

continual revision and reconstruction. In other words, learning is necessarily

a process of recurrent unlearning and relearning, whereby encoding rules

and conventions for their use are modified, extended, realigned, or aban-

doned altogether to accommodate new language data.” (pp. 140–141)

As mentioned earlier, and it is worth repeating, from a classroom meth-

odological point of view, there are no fundamental differences between lan-

guage-centered and learning-centered pedagogies. They adhere to differ-

ent versions of the familiar linear and additive view of language learning

and the equally familiar presentation–practice–production vision of lan-

guage teaching. For some, this is too difficult and disappointing an inter-

pretation to digest because for a considerable length of time, it has been

propagated with almost evangelical zeal and clock-work regularity that com-

municative language teaching marked a revolutionary step in the method-

ological aspects of language teaching. The term, communicative revolution,

one often comes across in the professional literature is clearly an overstate-

ment. Those who make such a claim do so based more on the array of inno-

vative classroom procedures recommended to be followed in the communi-

cative classroom (and they indeed are innovative and impressive) than on

their conceptual underpinnings.

I use the phrase, “recommended to be followed,” advisedly because a

communicative learning/teaching agenda, however well-conceived, cannot

by itself guarantee a communicative classroom because communication “is

what may or may not be achieved through classroom activity; it cannot be

embodied in an abstract specification” (Widdowson, 1990, p. 130). Data-

based classroom-oriented investigations conducted in various contexts by

various researchers such as Kumaravadivelu (1993a), Legutke and Thomas

(1991), Nunan (1987), and Thornbury (1996) revealed without any doubt

that the so-called communicative classrooms are anything but communica-

tive. Nunan observed that, in the classes he studied, form was more promi-

nent in that function and grammatical accuracy activities dominated com-

municative fluency ones. He concluded, “there is growing evidence that, in

communicative class, interactions may, in fact, not be very communicative

after all” (p. 144). Legutke and Thomas (1991) were even more forthright:

“In spite of trendy jargon in textbooks and teachers’ manuals, very little is

actually communicated in the L2 classroom. The way it is structured does

not seem to stimulate the wish of learners to say something, nor does it tap

what they might have to say . . .” (pp. 8–9). My research confirmed these

findings, when I analyzed lessons taught by those claiming to follow com-

municative language teaching, and reached the conclusion: “Even teachers

who are committed to CLT can fail to create opportunities for genuine in-

teraction in their classr