Page 60 - Beyond Methods

48 Maximizing learning opportunities
Learning Opportunities
The inadequacy of the teaching agenda, the textbook, and the syllabus—mainly because of their predetermined nature—presents a challenge for the classroom participants who are actually respon- sible for creating and utilizing learning opportunities. I shall now discuss how teachers and learners can generate learning opportu- nities inside and outside the classroom.
Learning Opportunities Inside the Classroom
Two aspects of classroom management that will have a huge impact on the generation of learning opportunities inside the classroom are learner involvement and teacher questioning. I will briefly touch on these two aspects of classroom management and then use ex- amples of authentic classroom interactional data to exemplify some of my points.
LEARNER INVOLVEMENT
Clearly, the best way we can maximize learning opportunities in our classes is through meaningful learner involvement. Considering that the learners are actually in control of their learning, and that they all come to the class with varied notions about what consti- tutes teaching and what constitutes learning, we have no sensible option but to involve them in the process of maximizing learning opportunities. Learner involvement will help both the learners and the teachers in making informed choices: the learners will be able to find their own path to learning, and the teachers will be able to create the optimal environment necessary for learning to take place. Any other prepackaged shortcut we may bring to the classroom is bound to be inadequate.
An important facet of learner involvement is what Bonny Nor- ton has called learner investment. The notion of learner investment “presupposes that when language learners speak, they are not only exchanging information with target language speakers, but they are constantly organizing and reorganizing a sense of who they are and how they relate to the social world. Thus an investment in the target language is also an investment in a learner’s own identity, an iden- tity which is constantly changing across time and space” (Norton, 2000, pp. 10–11). Therefore, one way of maximizing learning op-