ESLEFL/ELT What REALLY WORKS! It's NOT About Theories

ESL/EFL/ELT What REALLY WORKS!
IT’S NOT ABOUT THEORIES
by Arthur Rubin
General Manager, Authors & Editors
So many theories. So little time.

Are you familiar with current ESL/EFL/ELT theories that proponents proclaim, “x made (will make) THE difference in my/your professional success, and/or the success of my/your ESL/EFL students?”

Search the web for ESL, EFL or ELT, and you’ll find an almost endless variety of such statements, as well as descriptions of the theories that trigger them. The same is true for many of the ESL, EFL, ELT, and English professional journals, blogs, newsletters, LinkedIn commentaries, etc.

If you go to a conference, training session, staff development presentation, or, in many cases, a SIG meeting, you may hear monologues propounding one or more such theories, or you may engage in a discussion about one of them, with the suggestion that it is the necessary tool you need to meet your professional teaching obligations.

Wherever I turn, whatever I click on, whenever I flip a page I see an argument (pro or con) or an explanation (in favor or against), or an article, description, or blog that takes sides. My guess is that you having similar experiences.

What I haven’t found (yet?) is a well thought out and researched piece that OBJECTIVELY compares and contrasts a theory’s or multiple theories’, methods, successes AND failures in a comprehensive manner.

It’s as if the writers are assuming that there must be one theory that, if used, will meet all the teaching and learning needs of all teachers and learners.

It reminds me of the annual “Answer to all your business problems,” found in many business journals. It also reminds me of the companies that throw away last year’s “perfect solution” and jump on the latest and greatest one. Never mind that they haven’t even finished training their whole organization about last year’s “winner”, thereby wasting a whole year and a huge budget.

Truth be known, none of the annual theories are ever going to solve ALL of any organization’s problems. They are just not sufficient.

And in worldwide ESL/EFL/ELT, it is even more certain that no one theory will fix all.

What’s needed is a SYSTEMS approach that accounts for all, or at least most, of the variables; identifies the theory(ies) that is/are most appropriate for each variable, and provides the necessary protocols for applying the theory(ies.) Most of all, what is required –if we really intend to deliver successful or functional English speakers – is a way to objectively measure student performance.

Today, the nearest approximations of a unifying theory are the attempts to devise methodologies that emphasize what to do and how to do it. But methodologies are not theories.

Let’s look at this from a different perspective.

Why is it so hard to teach ESL/EFL/ELT? Because there are so many differences in the needs, personalities, learning styles, educational levels, intellectual tools, interests, and life circumstances of each learner.

These create an extremely complex set of problems to solve in order to succeed with even one learner, especially one that is struggling. How complex is it for any one person to learn effectively and efficiently? How much more complex does instruction become for a class of 20 or more?

I don’t claim that I am about to give you an accurate representation of how complex our job is, but if there is an error, it is most likely that the complexity is understated. I haven’t figured out how to represent complexity more accurately:

If there is only one learner who is ready, willing and able to learn, the level of complexity is 1 to the first power, or 1. If there is one element missing in the list of elements needed to ready, or willing, or able, the complexity becomes 2 to the second power or 4. Should this learner be lacking one more element from any of the three characteristics, the complexity equals 3 to the third power: 27. The complexity of four is 4 to the fourth power, or 128. Five elements increases the complexity to 3,125; six elements creates a complexity of 46,656. Seven elements results in seven to the seventh power: 823,543. Eight elements produce a complexity of eight to the eighth power: 16,777,216. Nine elements increases it to nine to the ninth power, or 387,420,489 And 10 missing elements produce a complexity of ten to the tenth power: 10, 000,000,000 (10 plus 9 zeros.)

Are you feeling totally overwhelmed? Hard not to be, isn’t it?

Now, think about how complex your job REALLY is when you have a class of 20, 25, 30, or more learners.

Yet, you DO deal with such a huge (overwhelming?) amount of complexity every day you teach. How do you/we do that?

The way we do this is to focus on a very few, sometimes only one, thing at a time. In a recent National Public Radio program there was a discussion of research done in how we make decisions. According to the explanation, the research showed that if we are holding a seven digit number in our active memory, and are presented with the choice between a piece of rich chocolate cake and a healthy salad, the probability of selecting the cake is extremely high. In contrast, if we are “remembering” only two digits, we are more likely to choose the salad. The researchers concluded that our ability to make logical decisions is limited -- that once we reach that limit, we make decisions using the emotional part of our brain; that the human brain cannot manage more than seven digits elements in memory and still have logical decision making capacity.

To what degree does the same effect occur when faced with the highly complex English Learning classroom with 20 or more students of various cultures, ages, ethnicities, levels of education, …? My guess is that the effect is the same: our logical brain becomes filled to capacity, and we use our emotional brain to deal with a VERY high proportion of the classroom processes of teaching.

What’s the alternative? In the real world, there may not be a true alternative. All the possible alternatives are limited by Standards, Union rules, too many students, lack of time, teacher exhaustion, lack of support, …

An alternative that COULD work is an “Individualized Education Plan” for each student. If we could develop these plans, especially if we did it using teams of instructors and advanced learners, we might have a chance to overcome the overwhelming complexity.

What is the optimum response to the existing circumstances i.e., what can we really do?

Based on my personal research, it appears that we are able to overcome complexity by: 1. organizing things, 2. filtering things in and out, 3. focusing on a few things, 4. selecting the most important, 5. reducing the number of things, 6. …

An example of this from my own experience is the Federal Regulation for serving children who become wards of the State through the Child Protective Services System. The primary dictum is very clearly stated: “Any action or decision taken must be demonstrably in the best interest of each child. The emphasis on each child drives decision making, and keeps the decision makers focused. It establishes a single element on which to base decisions, and thereby simplifies, focuses, and filters.”

This, I believe, is the missing link in our education system, and in the teaching of English, in particular.

So far as I am aware, there is no requirement or regulation that clearly states that all educational decisions must be made “in the best interest of each child.” It is true that children with special needs are to be provided with instruction that meets their individual needs, through the IEP process, but what about the majority of learners? And what about adults?

Unfortunately, there is little likelihood that we will eliminate the underlying problem of complexity in the near future. In fact, unless we are able to document that complexity IS what prevents our success and the success of our learners, we will not get anyone to listen.

Each of us will have to change the conversation. Instead of endless talk about which theory of teaching or learning will fix all our problems, let’s discuss how complexity by its very nature prevents us from successfully meeting the needs of our learners. We need to know more about the differences in individual learners, how best to identify them, how to teach each learner based on his/her individual needs, abilities, circumstances, et. al.

From these discussions a natural segue will emerge: a systematic approach to organizing all the variables, with charts to represent them, identifying how they interact with one another. Included will be determinations of the outside factors, and, over time, the development of a “yes/no” decision chart that transforms confusion to logical clarity.

Let the dialogue begin.


Contact information
Arthur Rubin
AUTHORS & EDITORS
10736 Jefferson Blvd., #604
Culver City, CA 90230-4969
310-836-2014
HYPERLINK E-mail:ESL@2learn-english.com
www.2learn-english.com