Partnering With Students

by AJ

We must teach our students not only English... but language acquisition theory. Why? Because our goal as teachers must be to develop autonomous learners. I want my students to become independent. I want them to learn effective self-study strategies. To do that, they need to know some basics about language acquisition. Otherwise they may waste a great deal of time on study methods that are inferior (such as grammar-translation).

So today my classes read an article about Free Voluntary Reading (by Krashen). We read through the article and then discussed the implications. I put them in groups and had them discuss the main ideas of the article.

I then had each group come up with three self-study suggestions. All of them were excellent. They included:

*Watch movies in English
*Listen to books on tape
*Listen to English radio programs
*Make friends with English speakers
*Read for fun (in English)

These are all excellent suggestions.... they show me that the students have a firm grasp of the Comprehension hypothesis. These are advanced students, so they are already at the autonomous stage. Really, they dont need a class at all. They are now capable of learning completely on their own (as their study suggestions show).

Many of today's students will graduate this year. The best thing I can give them is a taste for reading (and other sources of authentic English).... so that they can continue to acquire the language long after they leave the university.

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