Helping learners adapt to

unfamiliar methods
Sharron Bassano

Learners in contemporary programmes of English as a Second Language

(ESL) often encounter a wide variety of strange and wonderful new class-
room methods andprocedures. Today, perhaps more than ever, we encour-
age them to develop more personal responsibility and show more personal
initiative in their second-language learning process, by carrying out tasks in
independent pairs and small groups. Realizing the importance of relevant
and meaningfulcontent, we strive to personalize their lessons in some way.
In order to lower defensive barriers, we try to build an informal, stress-free
environment where minds are free to acquire.
Although much of the new research suggests the value and efficacy of
highly active, independent group work, self-investment, personal involve-
ment, and informality in the second-language classroom, students’ needs,
preferences, learning styles, and educational backgrounds do differ widely,
and some may have otherperceptions of this new teaching/learning milieu,
and may respond in unproductive ways. This article discusses various
student reactions to the activities we so carefully and thoughtfully plan as
language teachers, and offers suggestions on how to avoid or deal with
negativity or resistance on their part.1

The scene Ms Muller gives each of her adult ESL students a blank 5x7 index
card and
a handful of crayons. ‘I’m going to give you some instructions,’ she says.
‘Listen carefully, take a crayon, and make some pictures for me on your
card. No writing, please -only pictures. First, make a picture of something
delicious -anything at all that you think is delicious.’ The students hesitate
at first, looking around at each other’s cards and giggling a little nervously.
Someone draws an ice-cream cone. Four more people draw ice-cream
cones, Then someone else draws what may be a glass of beer, another, a
yellow sun. Then chocolate bars, chicken, cups of coffee, a peach are
recorded.
‘Number 2, make a picture of something you are afraid of-something
scary for you. Quickly! You only have one minute.’ Students ponder and
then we see spiders, snakes, large dogs, guns, wrecked cars, hypodermic
needles, airplanes appear in all colours on the cards.
She continues for fifteen minutes, prompting the students to make a
quick picture of ‘a special person in your family, something you want to buy
but can’t afford right now, something you see in the United States that you
don’t see in your native country, your first job for money, something you
forgot to put in your suitcase when you came here, something you don’t like
about this town, someone who helps you here.’
When all the drawings are complete, she arranges the students in pairs.
‘You each have three minutes to talk about your card to your partner. Say
anything you like about any pictures on your card. Then, when I ring this
.

ELT Journal Volume 40/1 January 1986 © Oxford University Press 1986

articles welcome
 bell, it is your partner’s turn to show you his or her card and talk about it.’
The room instantly fills with animated conversation and laughter as they
talk about their favourite people and things, their fears, their memories,
their desires. After each partner has had a chance to discuss the card, Ms
Muller arranges them with different partners and they do the sharing again
for another six minutes.

The challenge Aside from being entertaining and providing high-quality oral-language
practice, this classroom activity exemplifies four major concepts currently
promoted in the second-language acquisition literature:

1 Language teachers should give real and natural language experience in

the classroom, as opposed to repetition and mechanical manipulation of
vocabulary and structure.
2 Students should be allowed to explore relevant and meaningful, more
personalized language topics, in addition to the external topics presented
in the textbooks.
3 Teachers should strive to lower the ‘affective filter’ by creating a more
relaxed, informal environment where students are free to experiment,
discover, guess, and have no fear of humiliation or embarrassment.
4 We should strive to enhance student initiative: attempt to reduce
passivity by way of small group and paired tasks without the teacher’s
constant direction and guidance.

The pitfalls This instructor, like many others, spends hours designing and developing
second-language learning activities with these objectives to ensure high-
participation, effective, oral language practice. Usually she is successful.
Usually the students are engaged and involved in the activity planned for
them. But this was not always so. In her early attempts at structuring real,
meaningful language practice in a relaxed, student-conducted environ-
ment, she never knew for sure what to expect. Would the students respond?
Would they want to be involved? Would they help each other? Would they
be able to carry out the assigned task successfully? Not having the exact key
to successful oral language groupings, she witnessed many a pedagogical
nightmare, a few of which, I am sure, readers can identify with. The
following are some of the disfunctional, non-productive behaviour patterns
that may take place during this type of language learning task.

Aggression -Discussion is controlled and dominated by a few students who

seem to demand the spotlight or who are in disagreement, no matter what
issue arises. Except for a few vocal extroverts, most of the group members
seem to lose interest in the task or the conversation.

Discord -Students rush to attack each other’s ideas and suggestions, correct
each other rudely, refuse to listen to each other, or refuse to understand each
other. There is evidence of side-taking and clique-forming; there seems to
be much discrimination regarding sex, age, or nationality.

Withdrawal - A few students appear shy or embarrassed, their heads are

buried in dictionaries, they smile nervously, perspire profusely, squirm in
their chairs in excruciating silence, and, in general, avoid participation.

Apathy -Discussion of ideas and suggestions is not engaged in, students

seem to care little about what is going on in the group, no one seems willing
to do the work that needs to be done. Some may gaze out the window, and
maybe someone will fall asleep.

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articles welcome
 Evasion -Students talk about anything but the assigned task, often revert-
ing to their native language; no attempt is made to get to the task at hand.

Egocentrism - Each student seems to have his or her own idea about what is
correct or best; they seem to talk past each other, with no one really
listening. Students seem interested only in making their own points or
capturing the instructor’s attention.
Confusion -Confusion exists as to what the assignment or task is and how
the students are supposed to carry it out (What page3 What number? Who,
me?, etc.). They seem to see no rationale for the assignment, and they don’t
know where or why to begin.

Condescension -Students are overly friendly and polite: agreement is easily

reached, but no real feelings or opinions are expressed. Students are
engaged only superficially.

Complaints -Ideas, topics, or tasks are rejected as impractical, unworkable,

boring; they don’t have enough time, enough help. Negative or hostile
comments cause the teacher to become defensive, which in turn seems to
increase alienation.

The reasons for this type of behaviour are many and varied and have
been extensively explored from many vantage points in the last seven years
(see for example Alsop 1979, Antier 1976, Curtin 1979, Gardner et al. 1976,
Gardner and Smythe, 1978, Lindsey 1977, Long 1977, McCoy 1979,
Schumann 1978, Stevick 1981). Rather than enumerate here the causes of
student resistance and general emotional distress in the classroom, I will
offer six steps that may be taken toward avoiding or dealing with these
phenomena as they may occur in a classroom where students experience
unexpected teaching techniques, materials, or environment.

Some possible 1 Become aware of students’ past classroom experiences and their assumptions about
solutions language learning. The first step toward the elimination of resistance is to be
fully aware of the students’ previous classroom experience with language
learning, either through a written survey of the class or through open
discussion. By gathering more information about the students before choos-
ing our initial methods or techniques, we are better able to anticipate any
resistance to our presentations. A survey or discussion with the students
might include the following questions:

-What did you do in your previous language classes?

-What did you like best? What didn’t you like?
-What kinds of activities were most helpful? Least helpful?
-How did you relate to the teacher3
-What did you like best and least about your other instructors?
-How were you corrected when you made errors3
-What sorts of tasks were you assigned?
-What are your strongest and weakest language skills now?
-What kinds of books did you use? Do you remember the titles?
-What was your classroom like before?
-Do you feel successful in your language learning?
-Do you expect to succeed now?

Allowing students to talk about their previous classes puts both them and
us in immediate touch with the positive and negative aspects of their early

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 training. It affords them an opportunity early on to assume the role of
teacher, of someone with something important to share. It creates an
empathy among the students. Moreover, it indicates an openness, interest,
and sincere intention on the part of their new instructor to plan an experi-
ence that suits them well; and it lessens the feeling that their background is
unknown or irrelevant or somehow unacceptable.
Many students who come to our classes will carry with them specific
assumptions about language learning that may or may not agree with our
beliefs. Some may feel that all errors, oral or written, must be corrected
immediately or they will become bad habits. Others may believe that the
most effective way to learn a language is by receiving clear rules for writing
sentences or through rote memorization of vocabulary and structure charts
(Johnson 1983). Other common assumptions are that students should
always raise their hands and wait to be called on before speaking; students
should not volunteer to answer unless they are absolutely sure their
response is correct; all unknown words in a reading passage should be
looked up in the dictionary; and new language items should be transcribed
in one’s notebook phonetically. Oriental students, very often, have had as
their sole purpose for studying English the successful passing of college
entrance exams-discrete-point tests which require no listening or speak-
ing skills. Students from the Middle East have often experienced rigid,
demanding language classes where errors are met with harsh and continu-
ous reprimands or ridicule (Johnson 1983). It is not hard to imagine these
students’ reactions to an instructor whose techniques are unfamiliar to
them and are based, for example, in Counseling-learning (Curran 1972),
Silent Way (Gattegno 1972), Total Physical Response (Asher 1977), or the
Natural Approach (Krashen and Terrell 1983). Unless the student can
communicate ‘Who I am and what I am used to’, and the teacher can
communicate ‘Who I am and why I do what I do’, it stands to reason that
the students may perceive their new instructor as incompetent in language
training, and our students may seem to us a roomful of unco-operative
malcontents!

2 Build students’ confidence in your expertise and qualifications. After acquainting

ourselves with our students’ background training and their assumptions
about language learning, it helps to communicate to them our own personal
background and training history. We can develop their confidence in us in
several ways. First, we can give them a brief ‘autobiography’ that includes
our degrees, our professional experience and achievements, and our special
interests. We can tell them of the ‘hundreds’ of students we have taught
with great success, some of the research we have done, and some of the
current progress our profession has made recently in new and wonderful
teaching methods -whatever it takes to get their attention! Even more
effective is being able to demonstrate to students our own self-confidence,
by being entirely convinced ourselves that the teaching philosophy we
adhere to and the techniques we employ are indeed valid and actually
conducive to efficient second-language learning. One of the biggest pitfalls
we face is our temptation to mimic some other teacher’s methods -especi-
ally when we have just witnessed an innovative and exciting demonstration
at some convention or other -without first fully knowing the rationale or
objectives of the activity. Students know when their instructor is unsure or
tentative, and teacher insecurity, as Stevick warns us, quickly translates
itself into insecurity and unrest on the part of the students (Stevick 1981).

16 Sharron Bassano

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 We cannot assume that all students perceive the purpose or intent of any
given classroom task (Mickelson 1982). Some students will require an
explanation of why they are being asked to participate in certain ‘unusual’
classroom activities or in anything they seem sceptical about. Adults,
especially, may have difficulty at first with what they see as idle chatting,
game-playing or fooling around; they have little time to ‘waste’. It is
surprising how much co-operation and enthusiasm can be gained through a
short, simple explanation of what the task does to help one learn a
language.

3 Begin where the students are and move slowly. To further ensure that students
approach their new language class in an open frame of mind, it is helpful to
plan for a gradual shift in the strategies used. We can offer them the
structure and the form that they are used to (Learning with a capital ‘L’ is
anything they recognize as learning), while slowly introducing new methods
and materials. In early sharing sessions, when mention is made of the
aspects of their previous learning experience that they didn’t like or didn’t
find helpful, we can offer them different methods that may work for them
and confidently assure them that we have had great success in the past with
students in similar situations. If it is their idea to try something new, and we
introduce it in easy steps that ensure high, measurable success, their
resistance will naturally be lower. For example, ifstudents decide they need
to interact more with everyone in the classroom, you can choose a few
minutes from their regular, traditional activities and ask them to all stand
up and form a line in the middle of the room alphabetically, according to the
first letter of their last name. This requires only a little language (‘What is
your last name? Mine is Tran. I need to go down here. You stand here next
to me. No, over there between Chuen and Roberto. I think you have to go to
the other end,’ etc.) and is a very simple oral activity, entirely unstructured,
requiring that each student talk to several others, providing for some
leadership development and group co-operation, allowing everyone to
speak at once, and ensuring success (that is, assuming you have made sure
your group knows the alphabet!). This activity, called a ‘Line-up’, of which
there are many varieties (Christison and Bassano 1981)) takes no more than
three or four minutes, and, though it may be very different from some of
your students’ previous classroom experience, all are able to see how it
meets the objectives of independent oral interaction with more than one
student.

4 Show them achievement. The persuasive power of positive, instant feedback,

the showing of progress, no matter how small, in each class hour works
wonders when trying to sell a new idea. When we show students immediate
results from new classroom activities, their resistance falls away. If, for
example, you are planning to use a Total Physical Response method, keep a
large chart with a running list of all the different commands they can
respond to. As the list grows, so does their confidence in the method. If you
plan to include Jazz Chants (Graham 1978) in your daily lesson plans, it is
helpful to present immediately afterward a short listening exercise to
demonstrate to them how much better they are at recognizing reduced
forms. If you are planning to use various non-verbal ‘gadgets’, such as
small mirrors, kazoos, or heavy rubber bands to help your students tune in
to clearer rhythm, stress, and enunciation patterns (Gilbert 1978, 1982),
you might want to make a ‘before’ tape of several students and then an
‘after’ tape so that they may immediately witness their improvement.

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5 Allow for free choice as much as possible. When attempting to move students
into a different sort of learning environment from what they are used to, it is
helpful to allow the most resistant students to choose between two alter-
natives without any sort of penalty or judgement. In other words, if you
have planned a five-minute drawing activity-‘Draw a picture of some-
thing you have in your home that you brought from your native country,
something you would hate to lose’ -with the idea of having them show their
quick drawing to a small group and talk about it for one minute, and
Kazeem, your retired army colonel, scowls as the basket of crayons is being
passed, you might want to offer him a study sheet to work on for a few
minutes instead of coercing him to join the others. If he is more comfortable
with a ‘Change these sentences to the past tense...’ exercise at first, then
possibly that is what he needs. Later, when he notices how much language
is being practised in those small, convivial groups, he may change his mind.
And, if not, that is OK, too.

6 Finally, become aware of the students’ interests and concerns, their goals and
objectives. In addition to knowing where the students have been, as discussed
in (1), it is most helpful to know where they are going. The most effective
lessons, and the most motivating, are those that reach out to the perceptual
world of the student, that relate directly to their lives and work, their
families, and aspirations. There are many vehicles for getting this kind of
information from your group. If you are working with adult school stu-
dents, hang charts around the room with titles such as, ‘Family Health’,
‘Telephone Calls’, ‘Emergencies’, ‘Renting a House’, ‘Shopping’, ‘Apply-
ing for a Job’, etc. Ask the students to stand by the chart/topic that is a
priority for them, to help you determine which lifeskill areas are the most
crucial for the majority of the students. Make a wall list in descending order
according to their preferences, to show them you care about their interests
and plan to address them in class. For high school or college students, begin
a list of topics on the board for exploration and conversation, (e.g. sports,
famous people, current events, love and marriage, history, social life,
science, movies, etc.). Have them brainstorm until the board is full of ideas,
then vote on the ten most popular subjects to focus on in the lessons. The
same sorts of choosing can be done with language skill priorities, as well.
Find out whether they want mostly speaking and listening activities, or if
they need to read? or write compositions, or if spelling is important. Are
they interested in having visitors come to class from the community for
interviews? Do they like to sing? Do they want their assignments to give
them opportunities to go out into the community to search for information?
Secondary students may want to focus their English lessons on content they
need in their other classes -science, government, history, social studies. If
our English lessons are strongly content-based in students’ personal values
or in areas of current or future concerns, then the style or the teaching
process becomes much less obtrusive.
In summary, much student resistance in the second-language classroom
is related to unfamiliar instructional practices. This resistance is often
witnessed in classes that use an informal, democratic, active approach to
language learning, one that requires maximum student self-investment and
discipline. As teachers we may benefit from attending to various techniques
employed by the social-learning model of behaviour modification to help
students overcome their anxiety. As experienced, well-trained, and
informed teachers. we can have confidence in our choices of classroom

Sharron Bassano

articles welcome
 techniques. We can and should devise creative and subtle ways of imple-
menting those techniques for the students’ benefit. If they initially experi-
ence empathy, gradual and guided participation, positive modeling,
encouragement, freedom of choice, and successful performance, we may see
more openness and co-operation in our classes.
It has been said that teaching is nothing more than showing someone
that something is possible, and learning is merely discovering that some-
thing is possible. We know that there is no one way to teach a language -
the possibilities and indications are endless. By beginning with these simple
transitional steps we may, perhaps, allow our students to discover these
possibilities in a more productive and enjoyable manner. •
Received December 1984

Note Graham, C. 1978. Jazz Chants. New York: Oxford

1 I would like to thank Barbara Franklin-Apted for University Press.
her suggestions on the final draft of this work, and Johnson, M. 1983. ‘Student Expectations Regarding
Mary Ann Christison for her assistance with the Methodology: The Need for Student Training.’
original conception. Paper presented at the TESOL Conference.
Toronto.
Krashen, S. and T. Terrell. 1983. The Natural
Alsop, T. W. 1979. ‘A need to discover how students Approach. Hayward, CA: Alemany Press.
have been taught foreign languages.’ Foreign Lan- Lindsey, P. 1977. ‘Resistances to learning EFL.’ ELT
guage Annals 12/3. Journal 33/3.
Antier, M. 1976. ‘Language teaching as a form of Long, M. H. 1977. ‘Group work in the learning and
witchcraft.’ ELT Journal 31/1. teaching of English as a foreign language-prob-
Asher, J. 1977. Learning Another Language Through lems and potential.’ ELT Journal 31/4.
Actions. Los Gatos, CA: Sky Oaks Publications. McCoy, I. R. 1979. ‘Means to overcoming the anx-
Christison, M. and S. Bassano. 1981. Look Who’s ieties of second language learners.’ Foreign Language
Talking! Hayward, CA: Alemany Press. Annals 12/3.
Clarke, M. A. 1982. ‘On bandwagons, tyranny, and Mickelson, C. J. 1983. ‘Teacher Intentions and Stu-
common sense.’ TESOL Quarterly 16/1. dent Perception in the ESL Class.’ Paper presented
Curran, C. 1972. Counselling Learning: A Whole Person at the TESOL Conference, Toronto.
Model for Education. New York: Grune and Stratton. Moskowitz, G. 1978. Caring and Sharing in the Foreign
Curtin, J. B. 1979. ‘Attitudes to language learning: the Language Classroom. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
adult student.’ ELT Journal 33/4. Schumann, J. H. 1978. ‘The acculturation model for
Gardner, R. C. et al. 1976. ‘Second-language learning: second language acquisition’ in R. Gingras (ed.)
a social psychological perspective.’ Canadian Modern Second Language Acquisition and Foreign Language
Language Review 32/3. Teaching. Washington, DC: Center for Applied
Gardner, R. C. and P. C. Smythe. 1978. ‘Intensive Linguistics.
second language study in a bicultural milieu: an Stevick, E. 1981. A Way and Ways. Rowley, MA: New-
investigation of attitudes, motivation, and language bury House.
proficiency.’ Language Learning 29/2. The author
Gattegno, C. 1972. Teaching Foreign Languages in Sharon Bassano teaches ESL for Santa Cruz Adult
Schools: The Silent Way. New York: Education School in California and trains teachers in methods
Solutions. and materials for TESL internationally. She is author
Gilbert, J. B. 1978. ‘Gadgets: nonverbal tools for of the Sounds Easy! phonics workbook series (Alemany
teaching pronunciation.’ CATESOL Occasional Press, 1980) and is co-author (with M. A. Christison)
Papers: 68-78. of Look Who’s Talking! and Drawing Out (Alemany
Gilbert, J. B. 1982. ‘Pronunciation: an aide to listen- Press, 1981, 1982). Her degree is from the University of
ing comprehension.’ CATESOL Occasional Papers. California at Santa Cruz. She is an active member of
62-70. TESOL and CATESOL.

Helping learners adapt to unfamiliar methods 19

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