58 – Teaching well is a problem

We teach listening well – that’s the problem. We have a well-established listening comprehension methodology which counts as/masquerades as ‘all we need to do to help learners achieve their listening objectives’.

It has evolved over decades to fit what we think our learners can (sort of) manage and what teachers can actually manage. To qualify as a teacher, and to be thought a good teacher requires mastery of this methodology. But what if the methodology is off-target? (And actually it is). What if it has evolved to stay within or close to the comfort zone of the other things we do (reading, sentence grammar, pronunciation)? And what if mastery of natural speech requires frequent excursions outside the comfort zone and acceptant of the unruly nature of speech?

But we are hamstrung by our devotion to rules-and-exceptions and in particular to our adherence to the dictates of (a) the fairy-tale beautiful princess of correct pronunciation and (b) the handsome prince of connected speech rules.

The sound-substance that our students encounter outside the classroom (aka natural speech) bears no resemblance to the prince and princess of a fairy story. To the extent that we adhere to the fairy-tale fictions, we imprison our learners within the walls of the castle of a fantasy world.

Natural speech is not generated from a list of rules-and-exceptions. Nor does it issue from the mouths of castle-bound princes and princesses. It emanates from the Jungle where any ‘rule’ we may expect to find there will be swamped/swarmed/stamped/bitten/chewed into an infinity of tiny exception-like pieces.

For the learning of listening to be more effective, we need to teach less well – forget our fictions, let down the castle drawbridge and let the Jungle take over the castle – let our students encounter reality, and help them master it.