[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 13 | July 25, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]
In this week’s webinar, Cambridge English Empower author Craig Thaine explored the differences between teachers’ perceptions of learners’ needs, and learners’ own views. Sharing the results of a case study of a small multi-lingual group of advanced level learners studying at a private English school, Craig considered what the survey tells us not only about what advanced learners want to study, but also how they want to study.
Craig began the webinar by considering the key characteristics of advanced learners, according to both the teachers and learners involved in the case study. In the absence of any generally agreed definition of what we mean by ‘advanced’ learners, he agreed that the best option might be to adopt a ‘family resemblance’ approach, where advanced learners are seen as sharing some, but not necessarily all, of a set of characteristics.
The teachers in this case study saw advanced learners as capable of keeping a conversation going with ease, able to communicate their ideas, but with some inaccuracy – poor use of verb forms, for instance. Learners’ views, by contrast, focused more on positives than negatives, concentrating on their ability to use a wider range of vocabulary, and to communicate with greater ease, variation, and less nervousness. One reason for this difference in focus, Craig suggested, might be that teachers focused on the gap between advanced learners and native speakers – learners, perhaps, might be comparing themselves to less advanced learners.