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Meeting Learners' Academic Needs

Article  in  English Language Teaching · April 2001

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Meeting Learners’ Academic Needs
By Peter Reilly (Mexico)

One important theme at the TESOL convention held in Vancouver last year was the importance
of seeking new ideas on effective education from outside the field of language teaching. For
example, insights from two educational psychologists, Jones and Jones (2000), can be interpreted
and applied to language teaching and learning. They examined the academic needs of junior high
school students in the United States. Those needs include feeling important and secure in the
learning environment, understanding learning goals, having time to integrate learning,
understanding the learning process, and receiving feedback. In all, Jones and Jones identified 13
distinct needs. They concluded that motivation to learn increased and misbehavior decreased
when students perceived these needs were being met in class.

This article is about how 5 of the 13 needs are being met at a private English language institute
in Mexico.

The need to feel secure and important

The most important task for teachers at the institute where I work is to help learners feel
important. According to Maslow’s well-known hierarchy of needs, before people can achieve
certain levels of growth and creativity, they must feel secure in their surroundings. Language
students are no different. If you have studied a second or foreign language, you know you are
more likely to take risks and explore in the new language if you feel comfortable and supported
by those around you.

One practical way of fostering a caring and secure environment is for the teacher to listen with
empathy at the end of class. Specifically, the teacher can ask students to reflect on whether the
learning goals were easy or difficult, and what feelings they experienced during the class. The
teacher can ask students to reflect silently for 30 to 40 seconds. Then learners can do a pair share
with a classmate. A moment later, the teacher can ask someone to volunteer to share his or her
thoughts with the class. The teacher needs to listen with empathy, then reflect the content and
perhaps the feeling of the learner’s comment.

Using empathy this way sends a clear message to the students that their experience and feelings
are important. Because empathy is nonjudgmental, learners’ sense of security is enhanced. Also,
because the teacher is often perceived as the leader, the tone is set: people are sincerely listened
to and understood in this environment. Students report feeling acceptance when their teacher
fosters sincere expression and understanding of feelings (Rogers and Kramer 1995).

Occasionally in teacher development courses I’ve attended, novice and experienced teachers
alike have stated that this caring environment is part of their classes, but implicit. However, once
teachers try this sort of listening at the end of class, they often report that the explicit practice of
empathy does enhance the quality of classroom communication.
The need to understand the learning goals
Students need to be told what they are supposed to learn. Brophy (1998) reports that too often
students do not know why they are participating in learning activities. This is akin to asking
people to practice archery without showing them the target. Brophy points out that people
become more involved and derive more satisfaction from activities they understand and those
with defined aims.

How might this be included in a language class? At our institute in Mexico, teachers state the
learning goal in 20 to 30 seconds at the beginning of each lesson. For instance, the teacher might
say, "The goal for today is to learn how to talk about our habits" and then write on the board, for
example, "John gets up at 7:00 every day." These sentences are left on the board and help
learners remain focused on the learning goal.

The need for time to integrate learning

Learners are rarely given time to reflect on material that they have been exposed to and
practiced. Too often, classes move swiftly from one activity to another. One of Piaget’s
contributions to our understanding of learning processes was to discover that people need time to
accommodate new information and skills. Retention is limited when concepts are taught one
after another without reflection time. Instead of increasing motivation, this may decrease
learners’ self-efficacy.

The implication is that silent moments ought to be included in lesson plans. Teachers can
interject these periods of silence once or twice during a 50-minute class. After a discussion or the
presentation of a grammar point, for example, the teacher might say, "Please think about this for
a moment." Then the teacher can move out of sight or sit down for 30 to 40 seconds.

Some participants in teacher development courses I have attended have argued that homework is
the time when learners should accommodate and consolidate information. However, the depth
and detail of understanding is much fresher in class than it is hours later at home or in the office.
It is important to mention that allowing for these silent moments is not common teaching
practice. Thus, students may benefit from being taught as a learning strategy that silent periods
may help consolidate information they have just studied.

The need to understand the learning process

Traditionally, the teacher is the one who knows all. The lesson plan is private information for the
teacher, and students passively receive instruction. One of the aims of contemporary language
teaching should be to demystify the learning process for the learners. We can do this through the
three following activities:

• Teachers need to be open and explicit about procedures in the class. Commonly used teaching
terminology such as semantic maps, skimming and scanning, and controlled activities needs to
be defined in class. Jones and Jones (2000) report that such explaining promotes participation.
• It should be made clear how performing these kinds of tasks contributes to achieving the
learning goals.
• The teacher should ask students to what extent they believe class activities have helped them
achieve the goals.

One example of demystifying learning is related to error correction. Often at the beginning of
lessons, learners are engaged in more controlled activities. Then toward the end of the lesson,
they participate in freer, more communicative tasks. In the first part of class, the teacher should
explain that she will correct mistakes because controlled activities often center on a grammar
point or specific function and require accuracy. The teacher then should explain that later in the
lesson, during the subsequent communicative tasks, no correction will be given until afterwards
because the purpose of the task is to develop fluency. Thus, learners will understand why
correction is given immediately early in the lesson but not during later stages of the lesson.

The need to receive feedback

Feedback relates closely to goal setting. Goals serve as targets for learners. When learners
understand how they are attaining those goals, they can adjust their behavior to learn more
effectively (Martens, Hiralall, and Bradley 1997). From my teaching experience in Mexico, I
have found that for feedback to be most effective, it should be:

• Immediate: Teachers should give feedback as soon as they have something meaningful to say.

• Frequent: Feedback should be given regularly because students need to know how they are
doing.

• Specific: Specific feedback is much more effective than vague comments or encouragement to
"try harder."

• Realistic: Feedback has to be related to something the student performed or observed in class.

• Appropriate: Too many comments or recommendations can overwhelm the learner.

• Private: Feedback should be offered one-on-one whenever possible.

Here are five tips for offering effective feedback. First, relate feedback to the goals as much as
possible. You will be perceived as fair and focused if you do. Second, keep little pieces of paper
with you during class to jot down notes of specific mistakes that students make when speaking,
focusing mostly on their serious mistakes in accuracy. Give these papers to students at the end of
class. Third, state that the student’s learning is important to you and that is why you are speaking
with him or her individually. Fourth, remember we teachers are not omniscient and cannot meet
with every student. So do what is possible and try to make a difference with those students that
really need extra feedback. Finally, ask students to provide you with their feedback and show
them that you learn from feedback, too.

At our institute in Mexico, where maximum class size is 12 students, teachers meet individually
with each student twice a month. In the one-on-one meetings, the teacher first asks the student to
mention one or two of the learning goals. Then the teacher offers specific comments on what the
 student does well and what he or she should try to improve. Finally, the teacher asks for the
student’s opinion on these comments. These conversations are kept brief, only a couple of
minutes in most cases.

Conclusion
We can learn from the insights of many outstanding educators who work outside the field of
language teaching. This article has attempted to show how research on students’ needs by
educational psychologists can be applied to language classes to make our teaching more effective
and our students more successful.

References
Brophy, J. 1998. Motivating students to learn. Boston, Mass.: McGraw-Hill.

Jones, V., and L. Jones. 2000. Comprehensive classroom management: Creating communities of
support and solving problems. 6th ed. Needham Heights, Mass.: Allyn and Bacon.

Martens, B. K., A. S. Hiralall, and T. A. Bradley. 1997. A note to teacher: Improving student
behavior through goal setting and feedback. School Psychology Quarterly, 12, 1, pp. 33–41.

Rogers, C. R., and P. Kramer. 1995. On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy.
3rd ed. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Peter Reilly has taught English and worked as a teacher educator at Interlingua in Mexico City
for 12 years.

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