Kuma Ch. 4

Learner Perceptions:

"Teachers and learners do not look at the same classroom event as a potential learning event" (p 77).

Before reading this chapter, I was aware that students and teachers have different points of views when it comes to learning, but I had never really thought about examples of this. I thought that Kuma gave a great example of learner perceptions on page 77 when the students were not yet prompted with a topic to converse about, and because of this, off-topic conversations were occurring in the target language. This is a positive example of teacher/student mismatch. By almost ‘tricking’ the students into speaking in the target language, learning is occurring without being forced into it. It’s more authentic and gives a practical use to the language. I can remember countless times while studying in Spain that before the teacher walked in, students were discussing what happened the night before, completely in Spanish. I guess I myself never realized the benefit of this un-prompted use of the target language, and how comfortable it made me using the language by talking about things that were important me, rather than having to practice the language through required classroom activities.

Potential Mismatches:

On p. 79- “the learners spoke most highly of the news reviewing task, which, from the teacher’s perspective, “hardly deserved mention””. I think that this is a great example of how teachers can begin to close the gap between teaching agenda and learning outcomes by centering their lesson on the interests of the learners. In order to reduce the amount of other potential mismatches between the student and teacher, the teacher must do some research on the students’ cultural background. This will help eliminate mismatches in class discussions and activities that involve differences in culture. These teachers also need to understand that the students have a limited proficiency in the target language. I think that this will come with years of experience in teaching ESL or EFL, as the teacher will begin to see similarities in what mistakes students make, or what words are continually misused in order to signify a certain point that they want to get across. It is also important that the teacher has a good understanding of Standard English. As native speakers of English, we can be partial to teaching words that we are most comfortable using, and teachers of ESL or EFL need to realize that these words are not always aligned with the Standard English that these students could have previously learned.