Learner-centered Instruction in English Education: Reality and Expectations

Abstract

This study aims to find out the extent to which classroom instruction in teaching English as a foreign language in the departments of English is learner-centered. The study combines between the elements of a case study, descriptive and self-reflective techniques. The subjects are the teachers and students of English in the college of Sciences and Arts, University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia. To collect the relevant data, the researcher used the tools of a questionnaire and unconstructed observations. The questionnaire is used to find out the extent to which teachers are aware of the concept of learner-centeredness, and the observations are used to note down the behavior of the teachers and students in the teaching/learning process. The observations are a kind of self-reflection notes resulted from my teaching experience in the English teaching field. The findings show that teachers surveyed are not aware of the concept, and when appear to be aware they give contradictory responses about the concept of learner-centeredness. The results from the self-reflection observations appear in the form of different constraints in the way of learner-centered instruction. These constrains are those related to students, teachers, system and family. The most important among these constraints are the ones related to students' lack of motivation to learn. Awareness constrains on part of the different participants comes next. The paper concludes that different types of constraints stand in the way of implementing learner-centered instruction (LCI). Some recommendations and suggestions are offered for a better use of this approach. Introduction Learner-centeredness is the vogue of the day in the field of education in general and in second and foreign language instruction in particular. Teaching can be either teacher-centered or student-centered or a combination of both. Teacher-centered teaching has been in practice for centuries. Learner-centered instruction, on the other hand is quite a recent approach. It has been growing rapidly for the past three decades. Now it seems to have won ground over traditional teacher-centered instruction in many educational institutions and among educationists ' circles in many parts of the world. The shift of emphasis from teacher-centeredness to that of the centeredness of the learner is due to what is believed to be the failure of teacher-centered instruction style to prepare the learner to cope with the demands of the ever-changing and challenging life socially, politically and economically. At the same time, educators concerned with the growing problems of school dropout, low levels of academic achievement, and other indicators of school failure have been arguing for more learner-centered models of instruction. Such models attend to the diversity among students and to the use this diversity to enrich learning and to produce results within the context of current school reform (BEA, 1997). Memorization, or rote learning and repetition, characteristic of teacher-centeredness, have come short to prepare the learner to survive the present challenging society, which requires an individual equipped with the strategies, skills, and other thinking abilities that entail him to take responsibility of his learning and cope with the ever-changing demands."The meaning of knowing has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it" (Doyle, 2008, p3). Furthermore, politically, democratic systems have given a unique place to the individual citizen to exercise his freedom to choose whom to represent and even rule him. So is the case in the field of economy where the emphasis has shifted to the individual customer. This means learners need to learn lifelong learning skills they need to live successfully in an ever-expanding global economy (Doyle, 2008). In response to all this, education has started to pay attention to the learner rather than to the teacher, or the content, to learning rather than to teaching. Here comes the idea of learner-centered approach, which takes the learner as the focus of the whole teaching learning process. However, in spite of this wide spread use of learner-centered instruction in all fields and particularly in the field of foreign and second language education, most of our language teaching educational institutions are still under the dominance of the traditional teacher-centered styles (Liu, Qiao, & Liu, 2006). This paper is an attempt to investigate where our institutions stand with regard to the implementation of learner-centered instruction (LCI) in the field of English language instruction.