Page 92 - Beyond Methods

80 Minimizing perceptual mismatches
The three experimental studies reviewed above confirm our ex- periential knowledge that there indeed are perceptual mismatches between teaching objectives and learning outcomes, and more im- portantly, between the instruction that makes sense to teachers and instruction that makes sense to learners. The studies strongly sup- port the view that “the more we know about the learner’s personal approaches and personal concepts, the better and more productive our intervention will be” (Kumaravadivelu, 1991, p. 107). An impor- tant first step in knowing more about the learners’ personal per- spectives on classroom aims and events is to understand the pos- sible sources that could contribute to potential mismatches between teacher intention and learner interpretation.
Sources of Potential Mismatches
More than a decade ago, Kumaravadivelu (1989, 1991) attempted to identify sources of potential mismatch between teacher intention and learner interpretation by exploring learners’ and teachers’ percep- tions of the nature, the goals, and the demands of a selected language- learning task carried out by low intermediate level ESL learners in the United States. The task chosen for this study deals with news- paper advertisements. It focuses on the rhetorical features of com- parison, and the grammatical features of too and enough. The task has two parts. Part one, “Finding an inexpensive wedding dress,” presents information about a bride-to-be (her budget, her size, etc.,) and six brief classified advertisements for wedding gowns. Part two, “Finding an apartment,” presents information about a renter couple (their budget, apartment specifications, etc.,) and six brief classified advertisements for apartment rentals. The learners have to decide which advertisement the bride-to-be and the renters would answer.
Two intermediate level ESL classes, taught by two different teach- ers, participated in this study. The teachers (TI and T2) were given the same task and were advised to follow the instructional guidelines given in the prescribed textbook. The suggested classroom manage- ment for the first part, on wedding gowns, directs the teacher to have the learners read the paragraph posing the task, elicit vocabu- lary concerning wedding gowns, and, finally, to have the learners read the advertisements orally to complete the problem posed by