Good Teaching Is Timeless
Number
1 | English Teaching Forum
BY JERROLD FRANK
Over the past 50 years
the how and why of what we teach has been the focus of much thought, research,
and deliberation. From Grammar- Translation to the Communicative Approach and
beyond, the best methodology for English language teaching (ELT) has supposedly
been discovered many times. Yet through it all, or perhaps despite it all,
teachers have contin-ued to teach and students have continued to learn. While
many changes have occurred in ELT over the past five decades, good teaching is
timeless. Whether using a SMART Board or a chalkboard, an effective teacher
must be able to help each student connect to the material and the subject.
The three articles reprinted here illustrate the
timelessness of good teaching. In the first selec-tion, “The Conversation
Class,” Acy L. Jackson (1969) incorporates many of the traits of good teaching
discussed in the literature of that era into a lesson fresh enough to plug into
any modern classroom. While the colored slides he refers to in his extension
activities could be implemented in new ways today, Jackson describes how to
create an atmosphere condu-cive to learning that is still relevant. His
tech-niques, lesson plan, and extension activities of-fer opportunities for
students to make power-ful connections with the target language.
In the second selection, Alan C. McLean’s 1980
article “Destroying the Teacher: The Need for Learner-Centered Teaching”
reminds us that good teaching from the time of Plato until to-day has actively
involved students in the pro-cess by helping them to become initiators in their
own learning. McLean’s article reminds us that effective teachers understand
that it is not their job to listen to their own voices but rather to guide and
nurture students into hearing theirs. McLean demonstrates the im-portance of
understanding students individu-ally and shows how teachers can provide them
with opportunities to make meaningful con-nections in their own learning.
Finally, Patricia Miller (1987), a long-time
teacher, puts herself on the other side of the desk to identify through the
eyes of a student what she feels to be ten characteristics of a good teacher.
Her list reminds us of some of the cen-tral qualities of timeless teaching.
While this article and the others were all written in the previous century,
each in its own way reflects what good teachers have been doing through-out
time and will continue to do as long as there are teachers.
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