Topic 25: Student centered teaching and learning in the Foreign

Language Area: Principles and applications. Identification of

motivations and attitudes towards the foreign tongue in practice.

1. INTRODUCTION

I am going to develop topic number 25, which deals with student

centered teaching and learning and the importance of motivation and

attitudes in foreign language learning.

I would like to start this essay by linking this topic with the official

syllabus within which we must design our teaching plans and carry out

our teaching/learning activity. In this sense we can state that both the

current Spanish Education Law, and the official curriculum in the

Community of Madrid set in Decree 89/2014 of July 24th defines a

teaching / learning approach that takes into account the different

learning learning paces, academic paths and personal profiles of each

student and provides individual attention in order to correct learning

difficulties and other specific educational support needs as well as the

provision of curricular enrichment needs as soon as they are detected.

In this way the school system focuses on the needs of each individual

student.
The Key Competencies of autonomy, enterprising spirit, learning to

learn individually and in group settings together with the Stage

Objectives concerning individual and teamwork, responsibility,

confidence, critical spirit, personal initiative, curiosity, interest and

creativity in learning as well as an enterprising spirit clearly define a

learner centered learning environment

Learner Centrism and the Communicative Approach

The communicative approach is based on ‘learning by doing’. Children

learn to communicate by communicating. A communicative class is

inherently louder than other classes due to the ‘hum’ or ‘buzz’ of

children carrying out communicative activities or tasks as well as

using English for routine class interaction.

The communicative approach is strongly learner centered. It is based

on the idea that communicative competence develops from the

learners’ production and interaction. Activities should be based on

meaningful communication between the learners themselves carrying

out tasks with the guidance of the teacher who provides ‘scaffolding’.

The freer the language production the more powerful the learning
experience will be (Harmer). Free production and interaction provide

the most powerful language acquisition situation of all according to

interactionist authors such as Jeremy Harmer following the theories of

Michael Long and Susan Gass.

But accuracy focused activities centered on language are also learner-

centered. The learner must reflect on specific linguistic aspects of the

target language, compare them with his own, and develop increasing

mastery of the language as it is actually used as experts Brewster

and Ellis recommend. These activities are contemplated in D89/2014,

Stage Objective b and in the concept of Learning to Learn, Key

Competence 4. Additionally our curriculum stipulates that 7 Key

Competencies must be fostered and developed throughout Primary

Education and ESO. Four of these Basic Competencies are directly

related to the concept of learner centered learning: K.C. 6, or

“Autonomy and enterprising spirit” fostering self reliance both in the

classroom and outside it by, among other things, delegating a series of

responsibilities on the pupil in his learning process. Thus, the student

acquires a sense of responsibility and learns to make decisions and

choices, becomes able to seek for, retrieve and use information,

which, in general, will help him to become an independent individual

later in life. K. C. 4 develops Learning to Learn skills that will provide

the student with the ability to assess his or her own work and continue

learning in an autonomous way throughout his life. K.C. 5. enables a

learner to develop cooperative and other social skills to carry out

group learning tasks and other activities, preparing him for working,

learning and living with others and K.C.7 develops cultural awareness

and kindles individual curiosity about other people, other countries,

other cultures, other languages as their cultural manifestation.

In our view, this topic is central in our teaching practice, as students

play, or should play a central role in the foreign language learning and

acquisition process and we, as teachers, must involve them and guide

them as well as instructing them in this process. Besides, if students

see that they can contribute to determine what happens and how it

happens, for example in the syllabus, materials, methodology,

assessment, etc…, they will be more likely to enjoy the English

language acquisition process and succeed at it.

Nevertheless, to carry this out, before planning a course we should

know about our pupils and how to motivate them better as well as to

foster the right attitudes towards learning, as it could be said that

leaner-centrism and motivation may go hand in hand, as nothing is as

satisfying to a young learner than to be given choices on what activity

to carry out or how to proceed, within the parameters of our set

objectives, lesson plan and desired outcome. Autonomy with

responsibility breeds internal motivation, and motivation is at the core

of learner centered learning. Learners’ natural curiosity and wish to

know is aroused and their inquisitiveness is guided and oriented by

teachers in order to achieve an optimum learning outcome.

2. STUDENT-CENTRED TEACHING AND LEARNING: PRINCIPLES

AND APPLICATION

First to all, we would like to mention that our official curriculum is

based on principles quite different from the traditional instructional

model where all students proceeded in lockstep and there was no

room for individual work or initiative. Nowadays, lockstep and

instruction remain important for certain purposes but they have been

enriched with other approaches and techniques.

In addition to this, we find that learner centred concept is closely

related to Constructivist learning theory. How is Learner

Centered Learning linked to Constructivism? In this sense, as

Comenius put it, the student is the builder of his own knowledge.

Knowledge and skills are the result of the sequence ‘curiosity-

engagement-discovery-knowledge (Dewey). Hence, to place him at the

center seems the natural thing to do. Learning derives from the

personal cognitive engagement of the learner with his context and

surroundings (including school subject areas). As far as we see it, it is

a highly personal process but group learning is part of the process and

greatly enriches the experience.

As we can see, motivation is essential because when a student is free

to explore, reflect on his findings and compare ideas with those of

other learners the knowledge thus acquired is much more meaningful

and permanent than the product of memorization or ‘rote learning’

that has plagued education to the exclusion of almost everything else

for many years.

Knowledge acquisition of objective reality is a subjective cognitive

process that relies on interest and motivation. When a learner takes

charge of his own learning (or of certain aspects of it), the teacher

acts as a facilitator guiding him in his task of personal knowledge-

building. This is exactly what Lev Vygotsky called ZPD intervention,

and Jerome Bruner “scaffolding”. The teacher provides scaffolding to

each student in an individual and on a group basis. Besides, Vygotsky

emphasizes the importance of the social group as a collective

facilitator. For this reason, we can link his social constructivism with

that of Group Learning or Cooperative Learning

Apart from this, Learner Centered Learning is related to the

Communicative Approach. On this respect we must point out that All

Autonomous Communities in Spain, in Madrid D89/2014, base their FL

teaching on the contemporary mainstream Communicative Approach

following Council of Europe and European Union guidelines.

On top of that, the Communicative approach is based on free production,

interaction and meaningful communication. It is based on “meaningful

learning” and on “learning by doing”: students learn to communicate by

communicating. But How is Learner-Centered Learning linked to

the communicative approach?

On the one hand, the Communicative approach is based on “learning

by doing”. Those who “do the doing” are the students themselves. For

this reason we could say that the communicative approach places

them at the center of the action, and rightly so, because learning will

result from interaction. Truly free production and interaction will then
take place. Meaningful learning will be achieved

Authors such as Harmer and Brewster point out that teachers of

foreign languages may have to put up with a little more noise, but that

the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. In any case the teacher

should quickly and deftly ‘manage the class’, switching to a relaxing

activity if the learners become overexcited. (Brewster & Ellis)

From the point of view of learner centrism we can assert that students

are more motivated if they can choose activities and topics that

interest them and not preordained by the teacher

From all we have presented up to this point some readers may get the

feeling that the teacher’s task is not very relevant. In fact the

opposite is true.

According to Learner Centered learning principles the teacher is a

facilitator, a guide an information provider, a stabilizer, a moderator,

an animator, someone who provides ‘scaffolding’, as we mentioned

before. Scaffolding is a temporary structure that holds things in place

and can be removed when the newly constructed knowledge is firm

and can stand by itself. Scaffolded learning involves presenting the

learner with the cognitive challenges he needs in a particular subject

area at a particular stage and providing him with the necessary cues,
clues, hints to help him solve the riddle and make sense of what he is

engaged in, extracting meaning, and therefore knowledge.

In this way knowledge building by the learner takes place through

personal involvement and reflection. The teacher provides guidance

and encouragement and cognitive challenges to the learner as well as

hints or cues during the learning process. The FL syllabus in D89/2014

includes two important headings: Syntactic Discoursive Contents and

Learning to Learn (K.C. 4) involving reflection on learning among other

things. The first deals with language structure focused contents that

must be acquired by way of activities that result in language

awareness and control and accurate use of language and which

depend on the student’s personal involvement and thought with the aid

of the teacher. Simply memorizing language structures is almost

useless. Learning how to use them to enrich their language, to use

them meaningfully both receptively and productively is the true aim.

The second is the ever-present and cross-curricular K.C.4, Learning to

Learn which encompasses reflection on language and therefore

exploration and discovery of new language features in a motivating

way.

The term ‘reflection’ is key both in learning and acquisition of

language forms and structures and in learning to learn skills.

When it comes to actual teaching, learner-centered learning should be

gradually introduced in our lesson plans in purposeful but cautious

steps, assessing the effectiveness at each step of the way and thus,

both the teacher and the learners will become gradually acquainted

with the new class dynamics

We can introduce learner-centrism along two main lines of work:

assessment and learning activity.

First of all, it’s a good idea to start with assessment. As a matter of

fact, evaluation must be global and continuous and nearly always it

can be formative as well. Furthermore, it is carried out at three levels:

Teacher evaluation of the pupil, teacher’s self-assessment and pupil’s

self-assessment.

Students’ self assessment is today a familiar concept. A technique

that is frequently found in today’s teaching-learning environments.

We should point out that students’ self assessment’ activities can

demand from the learner a weaker or stronger level of reflective

activity, they can range from weaker levels of learner centered

assessment to very strong and demanding ones. We will describe four

levels ranging from no learner-centered activity at all (Level 0) to self

assessment techniques that demand great involvement by the

student. Since learning to learn skills are acquired gradually we should

introduce more demanding self assessment techniques as students

are ready for them and not before.

- Level 0: At this level the teacher assesses the pupils’ work. (There

is NO self-assessment)

- Level 1: The answers to worksheets are made available to the students

by way of posters on the walls. They must correct the worksheets by

themselves by learning to seek the information they need to assess

their work. Initially it can be posted on the walls. Later, it can be found

in a book and advanced students in the third cycle may be required to

seek the necessary information on the internet during the ICT session.

The teacher can then judge both the initial level in English and the

improvement in information-seeking skills, information handling and

management and practical application of the information found in self-

correction activities. A very useful variant is to swap papers with

classmates. Pupils assess their classmates’ work. (peer assessment)

Professors Brewster and Ellis emphasize the effectiveness of peer-

assesment versus pure self-assessment for the acquisition of learning

 to learn skills.

- Level 2: Children are given back their worksheets with the

mistakes circled in red. They must reflect on the error to

discover and understand the mistake made to be able to correct

it. Language learning ensues from this reflective activity.

- Level 3: Children form working groups to reflect on the work done

by the members of the group and find out the mistakes by

themselves and debate over the right answers.

Learner centrism prevails. The teacher supervises the process

and only intervenes if necessary.

Of course the teacher supervises the entire process in all three cases.

In case three, the teacher should walk around taking notes, and then

assess the entire assessment process.

After reflecting on self assessment as a ‘learner centered learning’

technique we must talk now about another well known and frequently

used technique: the choice of learning activity or technique by the

learner himself.

One way of doing this is by setting up learning points in the classroom,

such as a ‘listening point’, a ‘reading point’ and an ‘interaction point’.

In the interaction point cooperative task based activities possibly

based on games are carried out.

The degree of learner-centrism regarding choice of activities will be

explained as above, ranging from no learner-centrism at all (Level 0) to

the strongest reasonable level of learner centrism.

Level 0: The teacher determines the activity. The students carry it out.

(Fully teacher centered)

Level 1: The teacher gives the students a choice of activities and they

can decide the one they will develop. D89/2014 states in Art 3 and Art

17 that students have different pathways to learning. Each student will

choose the activity that motivates him most from the choice offered by

the teacher.

(“La acción educativa en esta etapa procurará la integración de las

distintas experiencias y aprendizajes de los alumnos y se adaptará a

sus ritmos de trabajo.”)

At the Primary Stage teaching will endeavor to integrate the various

experiences, knowledge and skills of our students and will follow their

individual work-paces.

In our didactic unit we establish a series of learning points in the last

session of each unit so that each child can freely choose from a range

of language-based activities. This also provides valuable feedback to

the teacher as to each child’s natural or preferred learning patterns

and language skills.

(TODAS ELLAS DIRIGIDAS A ALCANZAR LOS MISMOS OBJETIVOS Y

UTILIZANDO LOS MISMOS CONTENIDOS???) Logicamente no. Por ello

es responsabilidad del profesor ofrecer un mix equilibrado de

actividades. Pero…

Pero si hay alumnos que por perfil puedan desarrollar ciertos objetivos

en particular (como la lectura) hay argumentos pedagógicos desde

muchos puntos de vista para seguir la tendencia natural del niño, no

en todo momento pero si en diversos puntos de la unidad didáctica.

Si el niño tiende a leer o a escuchar aprenderá vocabulario, language

forms, spelling, pronunciation, etc. El profesor observa y desarrollará

los demás objetivos (en éste caso serían los comunicativos) (fluency)

en ese niño por otros medios.

Los niños que prefieran interactuar necesitarán actividades

adicionales centradas en la lengua y no en la comunicación para no

quedarse atrás en el terreno del conocimento de la lengua y la

precisión (accuracy).
Paradojicamente cuanto mas learner-centered es la clase mas

trabajosa es la tarea del profesor para optimizar la experiencia de

aprendizaje de cada alumno y guiar a cada uno hasta el tope de sus

capacidades.

Level 2: The students will suggest activities and will vote on them. All

will be doing the chosen one individually, or different groups of

students will carry out different activities. Students will in fact be co-

responsible for the organization of class dynamics under the teacher’s

supervision.

Level 3: Students will suggest and decide on a group activity and carry

it out. The teacher will help, advise, guide, orient, making sure that

students benefit as much as possible from the activity but without

getting in the way. Task based group learning involving free

interaction. Students can only work at this level after having acquired

the necessary learning to learn skills and practiced less ambitious

levels of student involvement!

In this way we can shift areas of decision making and responsibility to

the students and as a consequence, their sense of responsibility and

motivation will improve, as well as their attitude toward schoolwork

will change for the better, the quality of their work will also improve
because they will be more motivated. They will become more

purposeful and focused, since they will understand the learning aims

and will be conscious that they are developing skills on their way to a

given goal.

Our pupils will improve their learning to learn competence, KC 4. They

will acquire more autonomy and personal initiative. KC 6, as well as

social and cooperative learning skills. KC 5

The teacher is present to monitor and guide the process. She should

offer students many opportunities for productive practice. The tasks

and activities should maximize the amount of production and

interaction. We can increase students’ talking time by the use of

specific interaction patterns, which will simultaneously develop

socialization and cooperative learning skills, such as a multilateral

cooperative language puzzle played by clusters of six students. The

teacher’s role is that of a reference, a role model, a facilitator, an

information provider and a referee for the players. Moreover, she must

have alternative activities and strategies on hand in case the planned

ones do not prove as effective as initially thought.

Responsibility cannot be taught on a purely theoretical basis. The best

way a child can learn responsibility is by gradually being given

responsibilities at an ever greater level within the obvious limits of

normal school activity and organization This is something that must be

done in practice, that is, “learning by doing”

In addition, paradoxical though it may seem, the ultimate

responsibility for the learner centered class and class dynamics

lies in the teacher. The teacher guides and monitors the entire

process and should be ready to take control in case the class becomes

too boisterous or “overly and loudly enthusiastic”.

In this way students learn that freedom to decide goes hand in hand

with responsibility for their own behaviour and consequently, their

emotional and social maturity will gradually improve alongside their

cognitive one.

3. MOTIVATIONS AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE FOREIGN

LANGUAGE IN PRACTICE

3.1. Motivation

We must remember that Jeremy Harmer singles out interaction and

motivation as the two key aspects of successful language learning and

acquisition in a school context.

Language learning and acquisition, communicative or cognitivist,

strongly depend on motivation in a young learner context. Very little

can be accomplished without it. Motivation at the heart of the learning

process. Motivation can be divided into:

1.External motivation: that which originates in social attitudes,

parents, friends, media,

2.Internal motivation is the inner drive that makes a student engage

and participate entering the key sequence to ‘learning by discovery’

“curiosity-engagement-discovery-learning” in the context of

communicative activities and with the aid of teacher (or peer or group)

guidance or scaffolding.

Children’s Motivation is quite different from adults’. Adults have

different interests, a higher level of personal, emotional, social,

cognitive maturity, have a sense of time and a longer term view, can

benefit from longer experience, reflect on things, make decisions, set

themselves mid and long term goals. Internal motivation remains

important, particularly the sense of autonomy and responsibility, but

external motivation is quite effective.

Children on the other hand need to start with initial positive

expectations (external motivation) which must be reinforced by

positive experience in class. If the class bores or disappoints them the

initial external motivation may be utterly destroyed in a few short

minutes, as Jeremy Harmer points out.

A teacher is responsible for the necessary techniques to help sustain

student motivation without which students don’t get involved, don’t

interact and as a result, don’t learn.

As teachers, we must listen to our students’ chatter and conversation

to discover their interests and relevance criteria. Meaningful learning

based on communicative and in constructivist activities will then

become possible.

The identification of our pupils’ interests and needs will serve two

different purposes: to develop objectives and contents on the one hand

and to provide data for changing and assessing programs on the other.

This identification can be carried out by the use of formal techniques,

such as interviews or tests, or informal techniques, such as classroom

observation or questionnaires.

Furthermore, children also like to fantasize, to make believe, to play

games. They love stories, mysteries, guessing games. As a matter of

fact, they need to be enticed with a ‘what comes next’ feeling. For

these reasons, we must foster their natural curiosity and playfulness.

What is more, motivation is taken into account not only by the

Communicative and Constructive approach but also by Krashen’s

Natural Learning, elements of which are also present in our Decree

89/2007, e.g. in input based activities such as story-telling. Motivation

has been considered as a serious component of foreign language

learning by this approach and even one of the five hypothesis it is

based on is devoted to motivation, that is, the ‘affective filter

hypothesis’, which comes to say that the learner’s emotional state can

act as a filter that impedes or blocks input necessary to acquisition.

3.2. Motivation and Attitudes

Each person is unique, different children enjoy different activities and

are interested in different topics. It is highly advisable to observe

children’s reactions to different stories, topics, situations or games to

become aware of the profile of the class and that of specific students.

The better we know and understand our class, the better our

teaching/learning results will be.

The attitudinal factor is also strongly linked with curiosity, knowledge

and interest in foreign lands and their people, and comparing their

culture and way of life with our own. Sociocultural knowledge is an

end in itself, learning about the world in all its diversity, as well as a

way of improving communicative outcomes when communicative

competence is bolstered by cultural competence, and from the point of

view of class organization an effective way of providing context,

meaning and sources of motivation to the foreign language class. All

these factors provide an incentive to learn the language. Our Madrid

FL syllabus in D89/2014 includes a block of cultural knowledge and

explicitly links it with context and motivation.

Children need to be made aware of the fact that the language they are

learning is not an artificial language, but a language spoken by real

people in real countries, particularly by children like themselves. When

children are shown interesting things about different places in the

world where English is spoken the motivation for learning the foreign

language is heightened.

Krashen’s ‘affective filter’ can sometimes take the form of a negative attitude

towards a foreign country and it can exist for a number of reasons. A feeling of being

badly treated or being discriminated against may be the reason. A vague negative

social undercurrent towards the English language can be found in some countries

around the world as part of their collective sense of identity and historical

experience.
Conversely, we may find a strong interest in English among other peoples, such as

citizens from the Dominican Republic. There is a strong presence of Dominicans

living and working in the Unites States. English is therefore perceived as a valuable

skill since those who master it have broader life choices than those who don’t. Under

such circumstances negative feelings towards the English language tend to

disappear.

3.3. Attitudes and aptitudes.

Undoubtedly, human intelligence is not a single number; there are

multiple intelligences in various degrees of development. This has an

influence in the effectiveness of the learning strategies that we may

follow. It may also lead to a positive attitude towards certain activities

because they are easier for some pupils to carry out and are not

perceived as a tedious chore. Even though education aims towards a

well rounded individual with well rounded skills some students may

find pathways to the same objectives that work better for them.

Gardner classifies intelligences into: verbal-linguistic, logical-

mathematical, visual-spatial, musical-rhythmic, bodily-kinesthetic,

naturalist, intrapersonal and existential. We should explore them to

the full. Activities should be chosen to cater to all profiles in Gardner’s

classification. By doing so we will contribute to raise motivation as we

take an additional step towards learner-centrism in our English class.

In the context of a topic on learner centered learning it is a good idea

to allow students to follow their own personal pathways to “knowledge

construction”. This will lead to greater enjoyment and motivation,

which will in turn lead to better learning outcomes, while placing the

learner squarely at the center of the class and of his learning process.

4. CONCLUSION

In this topic we have seen how our official syllabus ultimately relies on

learner-centered teaching/learning techniques, highlighting the

learners’ role in the foreign language teaching/learning process. We

have stressed that pupils are to be gradually made responsible for

their own learning process through the acquisition of L2L skills which

will put them on the path that leads to independent learning.

Autonomy will never be attained without responsibilities and making

choices.

Motivation is an essential factor in the learning process. Teachers

must foster motivation and positive attitudes. Each individual is

unique, with different aptitudes and attitudes. One student’s ideal

path may be another student’s despised technique. To keep motivation

high we need a degree of student choice and learner centrism, and at

the same time student choice and learner centrism will heighten

motivation and deepen the knowledge resulting from the learning

process.

We should also reflect on the fact that the concept of learner

centered learning is closely linked with that of constructivist learning

theory , an important component of meaningful learning which is at the

core of our current Law of Education and implicit in D.89/2014, our

official syllabus. Cognitivism is at the core of a strand of

teaching/learning theory that begins with Piaget and is today almost

universally accepted and adopted.