Reflection on Teacher-centered and student-centered strategy in English Classroom

Reflection on Teacher-centered and student-centered

strategy in English Classroom

For centuries, education and curriculum designers emphasized English curriculum on teacher-centered learning. In recent years, although student-centered teaching method has been developed and been approached in real learning environment, the decision such as selection of language contents, ways of learning, assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes are still being made by teachers or educators. Traditional teacher-centered teaching and learning was the main way how students learned and teachers taught when I was a student. Normally, in the initial stage of English study, learners learned new rules and some vocabularies firstly, and then during the period of the practices imitation, learners practiced their pronunciation, exercised about the grammar, recited vocabularies. And after some English structures have already been acquired, sentence patterns and grammatical features were acquired gradually.

Teaching features of traditional teacher-centered method

Teacher-centered English learning environment in Chinese classroom for me at each English lesson can be a picture of those teachers specifying class objectives, highlighting entry and learning behaviors, selecting and sequencing learning activities, and then evaluating the outcomes and behavior of students at the ending process. The activities which teachers choosing were general answering question, reading together with classmates, listening to tapes, dialogues study, playing and using flash cards. The teacher may barely used discussion and some student activities from students' sides. There also might be little interaction between students and the teacher and few group works in the classroom. The methods to assess and evaluate the language learning outcomes was the form of examination. The only role of a student was merely a listener.

Advantages of teacher-centered method:

This traditional English teaching -learning method in Chinese classroom as a

foreign language focuses on input of knowledge and structures of language itself and grammatical system. To beginners of English learning or inexperienced learners, it is often necessary to begin by teachers instructing enough fundamental knowledge and making most of the decisions as the foundations of learning. Also learners from the teacher -centered English classroom may cover more topics during the same period and for teachers, they could achieve their objectives efficiently and control the class effectively.

Shortages of teacher-centered method

Learners who exposed in a long listening environment as listeners rather than participants will feel bored, fatigued, tired, undisciplined and sleepy. Teacher -centered English learning situations in Chinese classroom also are less tolerant toward the expressed students’ viewpoints, and it is more restrictive, critical in valuing the behavior and motives of the students. This will constrict the creativity of students and they will less bring forth new ideas. Besides, one of the aims for learners to learn another language is for social interaction (Long, 1981). Students need to gain language communicational skills, need to carry out real world tasks and what they do with the language. While teacher -centered English teaching -learning style may block and less focus on the development of students' ability to listening and speaking in English.

Student-centered learning has advantages for both students and teachers. Students develop learning and other skills and gain meaningful knowledge that will help them throughout life. The relationship between rights and responsibilities is learned. Students discover that learning is interesting and fun and they learned more because they were involved. Teachers have less traditional work to do, especially in the upper level classes. Students are more attentive and willing to participate in the class. Complaints about irrelevance and unfairness decrease. Teaching is interesting and fun.

Disadvantages:

One disadvantage is that there are students who do not relate well to

student-centered learning in spite of a teacher's best efforts. This is most prevalent at the lower levels but can occur in upper level classes. Another disadvantage is that the students have to work in teams. They complain about being on teams. Also students find it difficult to work in teams because they have not been taught team skills. Since student-centred learning places much more reliance on the active role of the student than does traditional teaching (where the student has a relatively passive role), student commitment and motivation must of necessity be very high. Thus, it may be less appropriate for use with young or inexperienced learners than with older, more mature learners. Indeed, some people are never able to adapt to a student-centred style of learning.

As well as being the producers of learning materials, teachers have another new role in a student-centered learning system. They are no longer the primary conveyors of information, but adopt a more supportive counselling and tutorial role. This function may be difficult for some teachers to fulfill effectively (or even to accept) and, in many cases, it may be necessary to organize in-service courses and other staff development activities in order to help teachers to carry out their new role effectively. Teacher-centered method can give students lots of knowledge and information in a limited time. Student-centered method makes learning less stressful and more enjoyable. However, personally speaking, maybe the teacher-centered method is better for Chinese students. This method is more suitable in China, which has a large population and has a large number of students at school. Firstly, it is quite common that each class has more than 50 students, which makes the class hard to control. Such a large number makes the student-centered method almost impossible. Because the teacher doesn’t have enough time to organize any teaching activity, such as pair work, group work, and role-play. So class time is the first barrier of using student-method. Secondly, in China students’ seats are mostly set in a relative small space so that it is inconvenient for them to change their seats when a teaching activity is proceeding. Finally, the teacher-centered method can give students more knowledge and

information in a limited time. That’s to say, this method can make our class as informative as possible. On the other hand, college students are eager for knowledge and ability so they prefer to learn a lot from their teachers and professors. I can’t deny that student-centered strategy is a trend in teaching-learning environment but teacher-centered one is more applicable and feasible in China of course we shall spare our great efforts to make adjustment to it.

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