Adults are not overgrown children. With this obvious – if not banal – statement, I intend to present in this paper some oversights and misperceptions that we as teachers of English to adult learners are guilty of and suggestions to remedy the imbalance and hopefully gain a proper perspective. By “adult” I mean “grown-up,” no longer a child. A university student can hardly be less than seventeen years old: hence, for my purposes the word adult means anyone over seventeen years of age. From the pedagogical point of view, five major differences between adults and children may be isolated, with three attributes of adults that teachers may keep on the forefront of their minds always. As we proceed, let us note the indictment each point presents by implication. After all, none of these is a revelation.
1. Children respond to passing years with changing bodies, adults with changing minds and feelings.
This surely should come as no surprise. I have observed many children from speech age up to about age eight, and most parents here will confirm that life has a certain static quality. Each day is like the one before. The concerns of the passing years do not change much from present flow of events. It sounds like a parody of our classrooms, does it not? The irony is that it is not a parody. It is tragic the way our adult students are inflicted with the same monotonous repertoire of strategies. The problem is intensified when our class comprises different age groups; that is, a wide range, and we continue in an innocent disregard of this obvious truth.
A crucial observation often made in connection to this is the remarkable obstinacy with which we cling to our evaluations of students across the years. If someone in the first year is, perhaps with reason, labeled “nonserious”, then when he/she does try to improve it is only noticed when the improvement is phenomenal. Surely this is an inhuman expectation and an unjust one.
2. Children are dependent; adults are self-directed.
The point is best made by the metaphor of ‘scaffolding’. The child cannot function in a learning environment without a support system including a teacher, materials, facilities; but an adult can decide on the materials that he needs. By ‘self-directed’, I mean the ability to have a goal, a shrewd guess as to what tools will be needed, and how long it will take to reach it.
Once again, the implicit criticism is clear: we encourage dependence. We thrive on the students’ need of us; we dare not let them know that a good deal of the work could be done on their own. ‘Self-direction’ to us is a contradiction in terms. We have long ago given up seeing a ‘self’ in a student; much less see him or her want to direct it.
3. The child is told what to learn; the adult views learning as a developmental task within the context of a social role.
The issues of curriculum and examinations based on the curriculum are parallel problems. Needless to say, they are controversial issues needing independent study. The point here, however, is different in that a curriculum imposed from above, by an external authority, is a reality. Again and again one hears teachers at every level complain, “I would love to do something worthwhile, but I have to finish the course.” Are we really so naïve to think students do not see through this sham? There are no easy answers, but fooling students only leads to the bane every examination invigilator knows: widespread cheating. As Shaw (1977) put it, “The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.” Postman and Weingartner (1979, P.50) make the point in their incisive book, Teaching as a Subversive Activity.
The learner comes to understand that what he is asked to think about in school has no bearing on what he needs to learn to thin about. He therefore removes the best, the most vital part of himself from his formal education.
Consider the implications for language learning. The learner is supposed to suspend his own language skills, forget his social role, his impetus to achieve his goal, and set no time limits while he learns the language. If this were possible, one wonders if the being who did it could be called ‘human’.
4. The child is subject-centered; the adult is performance centered, and insists on task relevancy.
Neatly divided into boxes, the child’s school timetable reveals an equally neat division of subjects. He ‘does’ English, math, social studies, whatever, for an hour. The separate notebooks demarcate the subjects. This water-tight boxing of knowledge remains even in college and university: English at 8.30 a.m., and the teacher “does” English up to 2.30 p.m. The implications for language learning are deadly. The language/life interface is most tenuous, fluctuating, subtle. To demarcate the ‘boundaries’ of English as a subject can only lead to fossilized studies. Living languages are never learned thus.
The tragedy can be gauged from a spontaneous remark made by a teacher in a girls’ college: “In the English class, you get not even a smile”. To me, the remark is a very painful one. It brings to mind visions of young people, sitting hour after hour with frozen faces, grimly gazing at the teacher, scribbling away with dead earnestness – English as a subject; English as something one lets the teacher “do” for an hour; English, always elusive, always with others, always a mysterious gift to be envied in any half-fluent speaker; English as a curse from on high; always the ‘grammar’, or ‘vocabulary’, or ‘stress patterns’, never the leaping language; minus the myth, minus the mystery! It’s never-racking. Excuse the rhapsody please, but it’s got to be said.
5. Children have little experience; adults have a rich data bank of experience.
One of the genuine frustrations that we as teachers feel is that our learners do not have any ‘worthwhile’ knowledge. They do not know, for instance, what Churchill did, or who Atlas was, or what the three divisions in the Encyclopaedia Britannica are. We then feel cornered into explaining everything in a bulldozed flatness. They never catch on, we say.
I confess to having made this very complaint in last year’s conference. Since then I have learned: why must I hanker after most of what is outside the student’s experience? I could, with equal ease, ask them about the realities of their every day life. Most students have home or work experience. Many boys are expert bus hoppers; they move across the sprawling city of Karachi in buses and minibuses, lifting with great intelligence. These examples are apt, but may sound banal. The question is, when have we tried to bring the students’ lives to the classroom? When we do, the anecdotes of travelling, or shipping, will surely perk up the class.
It is not only our misfortune, but our students feel it too. They feel a good deal of what they know is banned in the English class. My point is: Of all resources, the student’s private data bank is the richest, cheapest, most reliable, ever available resource. We only have to see it, acknowledge it, tap it.
These then are the five differences between children and adults. We now turn to the three attributes of adults which we must understand if we are to reach them.
1. Adults have self-concept.
Self-concept is based on one’s sense of achievement, and while we bully and shame our students we broadcast one clear message: we consider you a bumbling overgrown child who hasn’t done anything. The flippant overlordship we assume is hardly conducive to respect. Deaths and marriages in the students’ families alter them completely. Of course in large classes one cannot know everyone, but the students will perceive that the teacher cares if they are singled out at any one time. Even if it is only one or two times, they will respond positively. Mind you, I am not talking about the big buddy, teacher-cum-pal attitude, which is detrimental and in a real sense, unworthy.
2. Adults have a personal value system.
I intend to hold a discussion in one of my classes on an issue like loyalty in marriage, or for example, loyalty to a partner in difficult circumstances such as terminal illness. Soon, I expect, we will be involved in a real discussion on values, not in the typical English class debate on advantages and disadvantages of – yes, television. This will clearly demonstrate this attribute. The individuals have a value system based on their observations and models. As the discussion proceeds, these will be revealed. This is not to be a usual practice, of course, but the point is, can we really push aside the personal value system of our learners as being of little or no consequence? Do we? How can vital convictions be pushed under the carpet?
There are certain bonds which are inescapable between the adult learner and teacher. The realities of parenthood, religious rituals and symbols, decisions of lifestyles are all important bonds on which a basis of tapping the resources I’ve mentioned above can be built.
3. Adults have an organized set of feelings and descriptions about self, and expectations of what experience can yield.
The key word is ‘organized’. No matter how badly articulated, seemingly chaotic, ambivalent, or ambiguous, they are in a real sense organized and coherent. This is not to deny the conscious/unconscious choices of irrationality, not do I insist on sterile reasonability. It’s just that the above phrasing is better than ‘prejudices’, ‘quirks’, or ‘pet peeves’.
The ‘expectations of what experience can yield’ are nowhere as clearly articulated, tangible, and instantly satisfied as in the English class. Once the word spreads that a particular teacher/institution/book ‘delivers’ English, the rush for it is immediately visible. Of course if it does not, the reverse is true, too. We have good evidence that Ms Carla Grissman and Ms Iffat Farah, in their experiment at the University of Baluchistan, were literally submerged in checking work – work that had been assigned the same day! This in itself explodes the myth of careless, indifferent students.
Regarding the traits, I think that if they are phrased as imperatives they will be more easily grasped than as ‘may-might’ statements Above all else, of course, is the basic minimum requirement of all teaching, anytime, anywhere, the teacher must know the subject. Everything is hinged to that. The following is based on Chastain’s (1976) work:
1. Consider the whole person.
In the words of Unamuno, “to consider ‘man’ as the legendary biped, neither of here nor there, having neither country nor ancestry nor name” is to consider
. . . no man but to speak of man as one who eats, and drinks, and wills, and plays, and sleeps, and dreams, and dies, and to speak of one who is seen and heard, the one of flesh and bone.
The implications for teaching English are: to keep the student involved, to use life situations, to keep the place alive, and to distinguish between abstract and concrete concepts. This last one refers to the need of adequate elaboration of abstract concepts since all the students do not have comparable visualizing ability, while many of them prefer the audio sense modality in learning.
2. Tell the objectives.
Do not, unlike the Duke in Measure for Measure, ‘strike and gall them’ by a sudden return to purpose. Once again, it only behooves us to take students in confidence. Make the class activities reflect objectives. Analyze the learner’s task and provide variety to correspond to the various elements in the task.
3. Teach from known to unknown.
Use examples. Sequence learning tasks in order of difficulty. Remember that progress is in slow minimal steps, often invisible. Realize that much repetition of steps is necessary. Structure the difficulty level of questions. Students learn to do what they do. Teach for transfer of learning.
4. In doing the above, remember that self-disclosure signifies health.
If the teacher establishes himself as ‘a learner’ once upon a time; if the students know that what they find difficult was difficult also for him, or indeed many native learners; then we have put them on the right track.
To conclude, I quote the ultimate challenge implicit behind all these insights in the words of Rogers, the Apostle of Relationships:
The degree to which I can create relationships which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.
(Bennis, 1973)