Page 61 - Beyond Methods

Maximizing learning opportunities 49
portunities in the classroom is to seriously “listen” when language learners speak, and build on what they say. In other words, the learners’ voice in the classroom should not be treated merely as lan- guage practice, but “must be regarded as constituting the very fab- ric of students’ lives and as determining their investment in learn- ing the target language” (McKay and Wong, 1996, p. 603).
Recognizing the learners’ voice also means recognizing their at- tempt to create learning opportunities for themselves and for other participants in class. When learners ask a question or say some- thing, even if it appears to be far removed from the topic at hand, they might possibly be creating learning opportunities. They may also be indicating that they are capable of not only contributing to the classroom discourse but also navigating it in a direction not an- ticipated by the teacher. Therefore, by utilizing learning opportuni- ties created by learners, teachers can send an important message to them: their voice counts and they, too, are partners in the joint pro- duction of classroom discourse.
TEACHER QUESTIONING
Yet another possibility for creating learning opportunities is for the teacher to ask the right type of questions that will trigger meaning- ful interaction. In the field of general education, Hugh Mehan (1979) has identified four types of questions that normally occur in a class- room setting:
• choice questions that call upon the learners to agree or disagree with the teacher’s statement and/or choose a yes or no response from a list provided by the teacher;
• product questions that ask the learners to provide a factual re- sponse such as a name, a place, etc.;
• process questions that ask for the learners’ opinions or interpre- tations; and
• metaprocess questions that ask the learners to formulate the grounds for their reasoning, or to produce the rule or procedure by which they arrived at or remembered answers.
Although choice and product questions do have a place in L2 classroom teaching, process and metaprocess questions, by nature, are likely to facilitate negotiated interaction (see Chapter 5 for more details), and, therefore, create more learning opportunities.