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A class-centred approach to language teaching

Article in ELT Journal October 2002

DOI: 10.1093/elt/56.4.397

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 A class-centred approach to
language teaching
Rose M. Senior

This article provides a framework for understanding the principles that underlie
the classroom decision-making of experienced language teachers. It is based on
a study that examined social processes in classes of adult English language
learners. The study revealed that teachers are sensitive to the social needs of
their class groups, and that their pedagogically and socially-oriented
behaviours are closely intertwined. The way that experienced teachers set up
learning tasks is governed by a tacit understanding of the principles of group
dynamics. Many language teachers, it seems, have intuitively adopted a class-
centred approach to their teaching.

Introduction Many researchers have sought to understand the basis upon which
language teachers make their everyday classroom decisions. Allwright
(1992; 1996) points out that teachers spend a signicant amount of class
time behaving in ways that are not directly related to the business of
teaching. For example, a teacher might listen with the class to an
anecdote recounted by a particular student, digress from a pedagogic task
in order to give advice to a student about a personal problem, or joke with
the class when something amusing happens. Allwright suggests that
teacherclassroom behaviour can be viewed as a balancing act between
opposing forces, a tightrope walk, or a continually reinvented
compromise between competing social and pedagogic demands (1996:
223). This view can be represented schematically in the following way:

Social Pedagogic
FIGURE 1 demands demands
Teacher drawn in
opposite directions
Allwright also hypothesizes that the classroom behaviour of language
teachers can be explained by a desire to develop in learners a pattern of
behaviour appropriate to the formation and/or maintenance of a
learning community within the classroom (op. cit.: 219). The present
article will provide support for this hypothesis.

Classes operating The notion of language classes operating as communities of learners, or

as groups as unied groups of learners, is not new. Teacher educators working in

ELT Journal Volume 56/4 October 2002 Oxford University Press 397

articles welcome
 the humanistic tradition, such as Moskowitz (1978), stress the
importance of creating warm, accepting, class groups in which students
readily support one another. Meanwhile, a number of educators,
including Stevick (1976), Littlewood (1981), and Rivers (1992), refer to
the importance of developing non-threatening classroom atmospheres,
in which students feel comfortable enough to interact readily with others
in the target language.
All language teachers are aware that no two classes are alike, and that
some are a pleasure to teach, while others are quite the opposite. In a
nationwide survey Hadeld (1992: 7) found that a key concern of
language teachers related to the atmosphere of the class and the
chemistry of the class group. In an earlier article in this journal I
reported that experienced teachers dened the quality of their classes in
terms of class cohesion (Senior 1997). The teachers in my study valued
cohesive classes, and professed to go to considerable lengths to foster the
development and maintenance of class cohesion.

The study The present study examined a range of social processes occurring in
eight intensive English language classes for adult learners from diverse
cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The classes, which were held in ve
dierent institutions, averaged ten weeks in length, and on average
contained around 16 students. The levels of the classes ranged from
beginners with little or no knowledge of English to advanced learners
capable of discussing news items and controversial topics in English.
The social development of each class was followed from the rst to the
nal day of each course. Data were gathered through weekly classroom
observations, extended weekly interviews with all the teachers, and open-
ended questionnaires. These were followed by interviews with all of the
students (apart from those in the beginners class, who simply completed
a questionnaire translated into their mother tongue).
The results of the study conrmed that the classroom behaviour of
language teachers is governed by a desire to achieve social as well as
pedagogic goals. The data revealed that the teachers were highly sensitive
to the overall atmospheres of their class groups, and regularly made
impromptu class management decisions according to what seemed right
for their class at a particular time. For example, if they sensed that their
students were stressed or overworked, a teacher might allow a few
minutes of light relief to relax and reinvigorate the class, before returning
to the task at hand. Similarly, if they felt that the agitated behaviour of a
single student was unsettling the class, a teacher might pay special
attention to that students needs before returning to the business of
teaching. Teachers also took social considerations into account in the way
they organized learning tasks.
The following explanatory framework for the teachers classroom
decision-making is presented below:

398 Rose Senior

articles welcome
 Social Learning Pedagogic
priorities tasks priorities
FIGURE 2
Teacher draws class
together

The unshaded sections of the circles represent occasions when the

teachers attended either to social or to pedagogic considerations within
their classes. The shaded section within the overlapping circles
represents times when the teachers set up learning tasks in such a way
that both social and pedagogic priorities were accommodated.
The following examples from the study demonstrate how language
learning tasks can be eective not only pedagogically but also socially. In
each case I will explain how and why each task has the potential to
reinforce the notion that classroom language learning is a collective as
well as an individual endeavour.

Examples of Language teachers often require their students to brainstorm what they
learning tasks that collectively know, rst in small groups, and then as a whole class, with
are eective both the teacher or individuals writing words on the board. This task is
pedagogically eective pedagogically because it establishes prior student knowledge
and socially (thus avoiding teaching what some students may already know). It is also
Brainstorming eective socially, since it validates prior student knowledge, and may
even boost the self-esteem of class members who are unexpectedly able
to contribute to the collective knowledge of the class group. In a class that
I observed in which English words beginning with a particular letter of
the alphabet were brainstormed at the beginning of each lesson, I saw
shy students preparing words from their dictionaries for the next days
lesson, and then calling them out. The class as a whole took pleasure in
the sense of achievement displayed by these students, and the sense that
everyone could contribute to the group learning experience was
reinforced. This particular learning routine became so popular with the
class (a beginners class containing students who had never formally
studied English before) that when they reached the letter z before the
end of term, the teacher continued the tradition by focusing on words
beginning with consonant clusters.

Group listening tasks Language teachers commonly play cassette tapes or videos in class.
Although they routinely have an overall pedagogic goal when setting up
listening tasks (to develop their students listening skills), some teachers
are also able to accommodate social goals. One teacher, for example,
always let her students compare notes in groups before checking answers
with the class as a whole, thus giving opportunities for peer teaching, and
for ensuring that students could give answers if asked, even if the answer
was not their own. Another teacher of a high-level class regularly showed
current aairs programs during lessons. Even though the students
operating individually could only identify individual words, collectively

A class-centred approach 399

articles welcome
 they could produce far more. The teacher would write all the words
identied by individuals on the board in such a way that the outline of the
story would gradually emerge. When the class watched the video again,
they could identify further words and phrases. Eventually, building on
student input, and lling in the gaps, the teacher wrote on the board a
summary of the item in correct English, which everyone copied down.
This guided summary reinforced the notion that the class had completed
the task in a collective, collaborative, manner.

Checking answers A common pedagogically-driven classroom practice is to spend class

to exercises time checking the answers to grammar exercises. Considering myself a
sensitive language teacher, I have always been wary of pouncing on
individual students for answers to specic questions. I know how they
must feel when they dont know the answer, or when they get the answer
wrong. However, I have seen teachers checking answers to grammar
exercises in such a way that progress towards the social goal of
maintaining a spirit of classroom unity is armed. One teacher had
developed the strategy of encouraging the class to call out the answers in
chorus fashion. The students who were condent that they had the right
answer tended to speak louder than the ones who were less sure of
themselves. The teacher could then validate and repeat the correct
answer, while nodding towards individual students who had got the
answer right. Another teacher I observed had developed the technique of
asking for answers round the class in a clockwise direction (choosing
alternate students each time), thus giving students the opportunity to
prepare their answer in advance and, if necessary, to check it quietly with
a neighbour. Feedback from the students revealed that they liked this
activity, because they considered it democratic: everyone in the room had
the opportunity to provide an answer, and nobody was forgotten.
Contrary to what I had imagined, it seems that students who are shy, or
slow to speak, or who have poor articulation, do not want to maintain a
low prole within their classes. They want to contribute to the collective
learning of their class groups as much as anyone else.

Working Language teachers who use a communicative approach normally set up

independently in collaborative tasks for class work, and allocate tasks that need to be
the classroom completed independently for homework. Such teachers fail to recognize
that those moments when everyone in the classroom is working quietly
and independently towards the completion of personal learning tasks are
in themselves a collective experience that can enhance the solidarity of
the class group. One teacher who taught the same class intensively for
ve hours a day organized a quiet time each afternoon, when everyone
wrote intensively on the same, mutually-agreed topic. She set up the task
by writing on the board a word such as friendship, and inviting students
to brainstorm any thoughts or feelings that the word invoked. She then
wrote up phrases and sentences generated by individuals, until the board
was lled with words and ideas relating to the theme. Then, before the
writing began, she wrote an open-ended rst sentence on the board, so
that nobody would suer from writers block. Finally, she switched on
the tape recorder and played background music of the students choice,
while the students did free writing on the topic. As the course

400 Rose Senior

articles welcome
 progressed, the students wrote for longer and longer periods, and
produced lengthier and lengthier pieces of writing. It was as if the class
group was unied both by the music and by the knowledge that everyone
was writing seriously and thoughtfully about the same topic. By focusing
collectively on a single writing task, the class group seemed able to lift
those who, if left on their own, might have only produced a few
sentences. In this situation, the feeling of common purpose appeared to
enhance the students individual learning.

Oral presentations Many teachers incorporate oral presentations into their programs: times
when individual students become the focal point of their class groups,
and share information either from their personal experiences or from
their research. Oral presentations can have a range of pedagogic
purposes. These can include developing students condence to speak
before an audience (although this objective may not be achieved),
impressing on students the importance of speaking with appropriate
transition signals, word stress, intonation patterns, and so on, or giving
students the opportunity to practise specic presentation skills (such as
using palm cards or overhead transparencies). Many students dread oral
presentations, especially if their presentation is to be formally assessed.
Teachers who are sensitive to both the pedagogic and social needs of
their classes are often able to transform oral presentations into a positive
experience that arms the existence of a spirit of social unity within their
class. One of the teachers organized oral presentations for the
penultimate week of the course. The students, who were encouraged to
speak on any topic, chose topics as diverse as how to mow a lawn the
Australian way, the art of Tai Chi, and the process involved in making
fashion accessories out of dried sh skins. After each presentation class
members asked a range of questions that indicated a high degree of
interest in the content of the talks. Presentations such as these indicate
that, when given the opportunity to communicate information to fellow
class members, and provided they have ownership of the subject matter,
individual students have the power to draw their classes together.

Whole-class In order to encourage the students in their classes to interact freely with
information one another, language teachers often devise tasks that require students to
gathering tasks gather information from their peers. This information commonly relates
to personal likes and dislikes, preferences, habits, hobbies, skills,
experiences, and so on. I have seen teachers handle information-
gathering tasks in widely diering ways. Some teachers consider that the
task is nished when students have lled out their individual grids. In
such cases the information-gathering task has a pedagogic purpose (to
practise a new language form, such as, Have you ever ?) but not a
social one. Other teachers intuit the group-building potential of having
plenary sessions in which the information gathered by individuals is
tabulated and focused on by the class as a whole. This gives students the
opportunity to learn more about their classmates. In one class, students
from dierent countries gathered information about one anothers
educational systems, and discovered that certain assumptions that they
had held for years had been incorrect. Focusing on the content of what
people say about themselves, rather than on the form alone, enables

A class-centred approach 401

articles welcome
 classes of language learners to evolve into learning communities, in
which students know and respect one another as people.

A social-psychological If we step back and view the teachers seemingly unpredictable

explanation for classroom behaviour from a social as opposed to a pedagogic perspective,
teacher behaviour we begin to see that experienced language teachers are not behaving in a
haphazard way. Rather, their classroom behaviour is governed by an
intuitive understanding of certain key principles of group development.
Such teachers sense that if a class group is to operate as eectively as
possible, ongoing eorts must be made to ensure that it is (a) developing
and/or maintaining its identity as a group, and (b) making signicant
progress towards the achievement of its collective goals. These twin
goals, as initially outlined by Benne and Sheats (1978) in their functional
approach to leadership, are the equivalent of the social and pedagogic
priorities of the language teacher identied by Allwright.

Conclusion In this article I suggest that language learning is, by its very nature, a
collective endeavour, and that learning takes place most eectively when
language classes pull together as unied groups. I have shown that
experienced language teachers set up learning tasks to accommodate not
only the learning but also the social needs of their students. Such
teachers, it seems, have an intuitive understanding of the fact that all
language classes are composed of individuals who, with careful handling,
can be melded into cohesive learning groups. The evidence suggests that
skilful teachers regularly take steps to reinforce the feeling that everyone
in the class is progressing along a collaborative language learning path,
rather than learning in isolation from one other. It therefore seems that
experienced teachers have adopted a class-centred approach to their
teaching.

Reection Despite calls for researchers to take into account the social dimensions of
language learning, classroom-based research has for the most part
examined classroom interaction from a pedagogic perspective.
Researchers have assumed that the twin processes of teaching and
learning can be understood without reference to the social context within
which they occur. Teachers, it seems, have shown us an alternative way
forward. They have demonstrated through their everyday classroom
behaviour that language teaching is a highly complex business that not
only involves teaching eectively, but also attending to the social well-
being of their class groups.
Received August 2001

References socialisation in H. Coleman (ed.).

Allwright, D. 1992. Interaction in the language
classroom: social problems and pedagogic
possibilities. Language teaching in todays world.
Proceedings of the 1989 International Symposium
on Language Teaching and Learning (Les tats
Gnraux des Langues).
Allwright, D. 1996. Social and pedagogic
pressures in the language classroom: the role of
Benne, K. and P. Sheats. 1978. Functional roles of
group members in L. Bradford (ed.).
Hadeld, J. 1992. Classroom Dynamics. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Littlewood, W. 1981. Communicative Language
Teaching: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Moskowitz, G. 1978. Caring and Sharing in the

402 Rose Senior

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 Foreign Language Classroom: a sourcebook on
humanistic techniques. Rowley, MA: Newbury
House.
Rivers, W. M. 1992. Ten principles of interactive
language learning and teaching in W. M. Rivers
(ed.).
Rivers, W. M. (ed.). 1992. Teaching Languages in
College: curriculum and content. Lincolnwood, IL:
National Textbook.
Senior, R. 1997. Transforming language classes
into bonded groups. ELT Journal 51/1: 311.
Stevick, E. 1976. Memory, Meaning and Method.
Rowley, MA : Newbury House.
A class-centred approach
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The author
Rose Senior is an experienced language teacher
with an MA in Modern Languages, an RSA Dip.
TEFLA , and a PhD. She currently teaches on
intensive English language programmes at Curtin
University, Perth, Western Australia. She gives
conference papers and runs workshops on class-
centred language teaching, and has published in
both academic and teacher-oriented journals. A
recent article (Prospect 16/2) investigates the role
of humour in the language classroom. She is
interested in promoting research approaches that
enable the complex, dynamic natures of classroom
language teaching and learning to be more fully
understood.
Email: rsenior@curtin.edu.au
403
articles welcome