Page 46 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Approaches to Language Teaching

tasks and negotiate meanings, but they also need considerable support from
the teacher in carrying out tasks and activities (Bland, 2019; Enever, 2015). We
may conclude that of all the possible roles played by a language teacher, that
of language model and classroom manager are especially significant in the
YL’s classroom.

Reflection Point
Several metaphors may be used to describe what teachers do, some teach-
ers feel they are like actors on a stage, some prefer the image of an orchestral
conductor or even a gardener who plants the seeds of knowledge in learners
(Harmer, 2007). How well do these metaphors capture the essence of being a
teacher? Which metaphor would you use?

Learner-Centred Teaching
The question of the teacher’s role is closely related to the constructivist idea
of ‘learner-centred’ teaching, that is teaching which puts into the centre of
theeducationalprocessthelearners’needsandexperiences.Onamoreprac-
tical level, Nunan (2013, p. 16) speaks of two opposing views to how a lan-
guage should be taught. On the one hand, subject-centred teaching sees
learning a language in terms of mastering a body of knowledge, while a
learner-centred view sees language learning as a process of acquiring skills.
In practice, both approaches are used, the difference is in the relative impor-
tance given to one or the other. In a learner-centred curriculum, the focus is
on teachers assisting learners in gaining communicative and linguistic skills
in order to carry out real-world tasks. In a learner-centred framework, ‘the
measure of a good lesson is the student activity taking place, not the per-
formance of the teacher’ (Harmer 2007, p. 56). However, learner-centredness
can also be viewed from a different perspective, taking into account the
type of activities and teaching objectives. Rather than speaking of two op-
posing options which exclude each other, Harmer (2007) suggests that the
choice of using a more teacher-fronted or a learner-centred approach may
depend on the type of activity the learners are involved in, the character-
istics of the learners and the educational tradition. As we have argued in
the discussion on teacher roles above, in the YLs’ classroom, the teacher is
an effective model of the target language and provider of additional sup-
port needed for carrying out tasks which may justify a more teacher-centred
approach.
However, while there are important benefits in designing and carrying out
single activities with YLs following a teacher-centred approach, it is also clear

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